Effects of Chinese herbal medicine Xiangbin prescription on gastrointestinal motility

AIM To investigate the effects of Xiangbin prescription(XBP), a Chinese herbal concoction, on gastrointestinal motility.METHODS Forty healthy volunteers were recruited for this randomized controlled trial of XBP. Antroduodenojejunal manometry was used to monitor gastrointestinal motility in these subjects. After the subjects had fasted for at least 12 h, XBP(n = 30) or placebo(n = 10) was orally administrated and gastrointestinal motility was recorded for 4 h. Plasma motilin and ghrelin were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.RESULTS Oral administration of XBP significantly increased the amplitude of duodenal contractions [19.5(13.0-26.7) vs 16.9(12.3-23.9), P < 0.05], jejunal contractions [18.3(15.3-25.0) vs 15.4(11.7-23.9), P < 0.01], and the motility index of duodenal contractions [522.0(146.0-139.0) vs 281.0(76.5-1006.0), P < 0.01] in phase Ⅱ of the migratory motor complex(MMC), which subsequently initiated the MMC cycle [74.0(30.0-118.0) vs 116.5(24.0-219.0), P < 0.05], shortened the duration of phase I of the MMC [42.0(0.0-90.0) vs 111.5(42.0-171.0), P < 0.01], and lengthened the duration of phase Ⅱ of the MMC [120(21-240) vs 58(16-170), P < 0.01] compared to the duration before XBP administration. There were significant differences in the amplitude of jejunal contractions [19.8(14.0-30.0) vs 18.0(13.0-28.5), P < 0.05], the motility index of duodenal contractions [236.0(115.0-306.0) vs 195.0(109.0-310.0), P < 0.05], and jejunal contractions [214.0(95.0-403.0) vs 178.0(55.0-304.0), P < 0.01] in phase Ⅲ of the MMC. Oral administration of XBP greatly increased plasma motilin(57.69 ± 9.03 vs 49.38 ± 8.63, P < 0.01) and ghrelin(279.20 ± 104.31 vs 238.73 ± 115.59, P < 0.01) concentrations compared to concentrations after oral administration of the placebo.CONCLUSION XBP can stimulate duodenal and jejunal motility and increase the concentrations of plasma motilin and ghrelin. The clinical applicability of XBP in treating GDIM deserves investigation.

Rapid recognition of Chinese herbal pieces of Areca catechu by different concocted processes using Fourier transform mid-infrared and near-infrared spectroscopy combined with partial least-squares discriminant analysis

Rapid and sensitive recognition of herbal pieces according to different concocted processing is crucial to quality control and pharmaceutical effect. Near-infrared （NIR） and mid-infrared （MIR） technology combined with supervised pattern recognition based on partial least-squares discriminant analysis （PLSDA） was attempted to classify and recognize six different concocted processing pieces of 600 Areca catechu L. samples and the influence of fingerprint information preprocessing methods on recognition performance was also investigated in this work. Recognition rates of 99.24%, 100% and 99.49% for original fingerprint, multiple scatter correct （MSC） fingerprint and second derivative （2nd derivative） fingerprint of NIR spectra were achieved by PLSDA models, respectively. Meanwhile, a perfect recognition rate of 100% was obtained for the above three fingerprint models of MIR spectra. In conclusion, PLSDA can rapidly and effectively extract otherness of fingerprint information from NIR and MIR spectra to identify different concocted herbal pieces ofA. catechu.