Chinese herbal medicine Guangmu Tong, also known as Mutong Madouling or Northeast Mutong, is harvested in autumn and winter. After removing the coarse skin and drying it, it has the effects of clearing heart fire, promoting urination, and relieving menstrual pain and lactation. Although Guangmu Tong has high medicinal value, it is also highly toxic, so we need to have a detailed understanding of Guangmu Tong!
Image of Guangmu Tong
Modern Pharmacological Research on Guangmu Tong
1. Mutong contains Madouling acid A, which has a significant hypertensive effect.
2. Madouling acid A can inhibit the growth of cancer cells, i.e., it has an anti-tumor effect.
3. Mutong has a diuretic effect.
4. Madouling acid A has an excitatory effect on isolated rabbit intestines, intact rabbit intestines, and intact cat uteruses.
5. Madouling acid A enhances the phagocytic function of phagocytes and improves cellular immune function.
Image of Guangmu Tong
Methods for Identifying Guangmu Tong
1. The powder of Guangmu Tong is pale yellow. The fiber cells are mostly bundled, long and rhomboidal, with a diameter of 11-20μm. The walls have obvious pitted striations, and the pit openings are obliquely cracked or intersected in a cross shape.
The separating fibers have a diameter of 21-42μm, and the pitted striations are obvious. Stone cells are rare, with a square or polygonal shape and thick walls.
Calcium oxalate cluster crystals have a diameter of about 40μm. The large pitted ducts have a diameter of about 328μm, mostly fragmented, and the pitted ducts are circular and densely arranged; the pitted duct cells are rare.
2. Take 1g of the powder of Guangmu Tong, add 20ml of 70% ethanol, heat and reflux for 15 minutes, cool, and filter.
Dot the filtrate on filter paper, observe under ultraviolet light (365nm) after drying, and show a sky blue fluorescence.
Add 1 drop of dilute hydrochloric acid to the spot, dry, and show yellow-green fluorescence, then expose to ammonia vapor to restore the sky blue fluorescence.
3. Take 1g of the powder of Guangmu Tong, add 50ml of ethanol, heat and reflux for 1 hour, filter, evaporate the filtrate, dissolve the residue with 1ml of ethanol, and use it as the test solution.
Take 1g of the reference medicinal material of Guangmu Tong, and prepare the reference medicinal material solution in the same way. Take Madouling acid as a reference substance, and prepare a solution containing 0.5mg per 1ml as the reference solution.
Perform thin-layer chromatography (Appendix ⅥB) test, take 3μl of each of the above three solutions, spot them on the same silica gel G plate, make them into strips, and use the upper layer solution of toluene-acetic acid ethyl ester-water-formic acid (20:10:1:1) as the mobile phase, develop, take out, air dry, and inspect under daylight and ultraviolet light (365nm).
In the test solution chromatography, show the same color spots in the corresponding positions as the reference medicinal material chromatography and the reference substance chromatography.
