The Active Ingredients Of Cistanche: Echinacoside And Verbascoside, And Their Effects

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Cistanche deserticola is a desert full parasitic plant, which is perennial and absorbs nutrients and water from the host to maintain life. The structure of parasitic plants is generally relatively simple and has strong reproductive and vitality. When encountering a host, it will cling to the parasitic host. Parasitic plants contain only a small amount of chlorophyll, or even no chlorophyll, and cannot perform photosynthesis to produce nutrients. They often parasitize on wild plants or trees. Since all nutrients come from their hosts, they sometimes cause the hosts to dry up and die because they are dependent on plants. Although some of these parasitic plants can cause damage to forest trees, some have medicinal value such as Cistanche deserticola. Cistanche is mainly distributed in Inner Mongolia, Gansu, and Xinjiang, and has the reputation of "desert ginseng".

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Cistanche is a traditional valuable nourishing Chinese medicinal material in China. It is sweet, salty, and warm. It has the functions of tonifying kidney yang, nourishing essence, and blood, moistening intestines and laxatives, and delaying aging. The main active ingredients of modern medical research Cistanche are: Cistanche contains a lot of amino acids, vitamins and minerals, glycosides, and mucopolysaccharides. For example, it contains phenyl propyl glycosides, genocides, cistanche glycosides, and 7 kinds of phenylethanol glycosides; substances similar to testosterone and estradiol; and trace elements such as potassium, sodium, calcium, zinc, manganese, and copper. The active ingredients recorded in the pharmacopeia mainly include total phenylethanol glycosides, echinacoside, verbascoside

Modern pharmacological studies have shown that, in addition to the traditional Chinese medicine for nourishing the kidney and strengthening yang, the phenylethanoid glycosides in Cistanche are mainly echinacoside and verbascoside, which are the core components of the efficacy of Cistanche. Echinacoside and verbascoside have a wide range of pharmacological effects, including antioxidant, nerve protection, learning and memory improvement, anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, liver protection, and immune regulation.

One of the active ingredients of Cistanche echinacoside

【Molecular formula】C35H46O20 

【Molecular weight】786.72 

【Properties】White crystalline powder, soluble in methanol, ethanol, hot water, slightly soluble in ethyl acetate. echinacoside contains a variety of medicinally active ingredients, including polysaccharides, glycoproteins, and alkyl amides.

Echinacoside has a wide range of therapeutic uses, including enhancement of the immune system, anti-cancer effects, antioxidant effects, and liver regulation. Modern research has shown that echinacoside can achieve pharmacological effects such as invigorating the kidney and nourishing essence, enhancing immunity, and delaying aging by entering the human body. At present, in the screening research on the pathogenesis of senile dementia and anti-senile dementia drugs, it is found that echinacoside has the ability to improve memory and learning, and can effectively prevent the early symptoms of senile dementia.

Pharmacological effects of echinacoside

• Antioxidant, anti-aging effect

• Neuroprotective effects

• Anti-inflammatory and wound healing effects

• Liver protection

• Bone protection

• Anti-tumor effect

• Immunomodulatory effects

• Prevents Alzheimer's

• In addition to the above effects, echinacoside also has anti-apoptotic effects, anti-diabetic effects, etc.

One of the active ingredients of Cistanche deserticola is verbascoside

【Molecular formula】C29H36O15

【Molecular weight】624.59

【Properties】Off-white or light yellow crystalline powder, soluble in methanol.

Verbascoside is a kind of compound with strong biological activity, which has various physiological effects such as anti-inflammatory, enhancing immunity, anti-hypoxia, scavenging free radicals, DNA base repair, and treating liver fibrosis.

At present, in the research on the pathological mechanism of liver fibrosis, it is found that its pathological mechanism has a strong correlation with the pharmacological prevention and control mechanism of verbascoside. For liver fibrosis, there is still no recognized effective treatment plan. In-depth studies have found that verbascoside inhibits the migration of HSCs, reduces ECM secretion, promotes ECM degradation, inhibits HSC proliferation, and induces apoptosis.

Pharmacological Actions of verbascoside

• Pain relief

• Improve immunity

• Anti-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory effects

• Enhance memory effect

• hypolipidemic effect

• Laxative effect

• Anti-hypoxia effect

• Anti-cancer effect

Cistanche Extract is made from Cistanche, which is processed by grinding, extraction (75% ethanol), concentration, water sedimentation, centrifugation, purification, re-concentration, drying, crushing, mixing, packaging, and other processes. Cistanche deserticola included in the 2015 edition of "Chinese Pharmacopoeia", under the content determination item, HPLC method was used to control the main medicinal components echinacoside and verbascoside in Cistanche deserticola respectively. The total content of glucoside and verbascoside should not be lower than 1.5%, which is much higher than 0.3% of Cistanche deserticola.