Zhang Enming, Ji Xin, Ouyang Fang, Lei Yang, Deng Shun, Rong Haibo, Deng Xuangen, Shen Hai
School of Sports Medicine and Physical Therapy, Beijing Sport University, Beijing, China.
Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China.
Front Pharmacol. 2023 Mar 16;14:1125600. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2023.1125600. eCollection 2023.
Entomoceuticals define a subset of pharmaceuticals derived from insects. The therapeutic effect of insect-derived drugs has been empirically validated by the direct use of various folk medicines originating from three sources in particular: the glandular secretions of insects (e.g., silk, honey, venom), the body parts of the insect or the whole used live or by various processing (e.g., cooked, toasted, ground), and active ingredients extracted from insects or insect-microbe symbiosis. Insects have been widely exploited in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) relative to other ethnomedicines, especially in the prospect of insect species for medicinal uses. It is noticeable that most of these entomoceuticals are also exploited as health food for improving immune function. In addition, some edible insects are rich in animal protein and have high nutritional value, which are used in the food field, such as insect wine, health supplements and so on. In this review, we focused on 12 insect species that have been widely used in traditional Chinese herbal formulae but have remained less investigated for their biological properties in previous studies. We also combined the entomoceutical knowledge with recent advances in insect omics. This review specifies the underexplored medicinal insects from ethnomedicine and shows their specific medicinal and nutritional roles in traditional medicine.
昆虫药物定义了一类源自昆虫的药物子集。昆虫衍生药物的治疗效果已通过直接使用特别是源自三种来源的各种民间药物得到经验验证：昆虫的腺体分泌物（如蚕丝、蜂蜜、毒液）、昆虫的身体部位或整个活体或经过各种加工（如煮熟、烘烤、研磨）后的部分，以及从昆虫或昆虫与微生物共生体中提取的活性成分。与其他民族医学相比，昆虫在中国传统医学（TCM）中得到了广泛应用，尤其是在药用昆虫种类方面。值得注意的是，这些昆虫药物中的大多数也被用作改善免疫功能的保健食品。此外，一些可食用昆虫富含动物蛋白，具有很高的营养价值，被用于食品领域，如昆虫酒、保健品等。在这篇综述中，我们聚焦于12种在中国传统草药配方中广泛使用但在以往研究中对其生物学特性研究较少的昆虫物种。我们还将昆虫药物知识与昆虫组学的最新进展相结合。这篇综述明确了民族医学中未被充分研究的药用昆虫，并展示了它们在传统医学中的特定药用和营养作用。
