A cost-effective and environmentally friendly approach was developed to improve the extraction of active ingredients from plants, in which a bifunctional enzyme was employed for not only facilitating cell wall degradation but also increasing the bioactivity of target compounds in the extract. In the aqueous extraction of flavonoids from Glycyrrhizae radix, Trichoderma viride cellulase, a commercial cell-wall-degrading enzyme, was found to efficiently deglycosylate liquiritin and isoliquiritin, which are of high content but low bioactivity, into their aglycones that have much higher physiological activities for dietary and medicinal uses. Under optimized conditions, the extraction yield of liquiritigenin and isoliquiritigenin aglycones reached 4.23 and 0.39 mg/g of dry weight (dw) with 6.51- and 3.55-fold increases, respectively. The same approach was expanded to the extraction of flavonoids from Scutellariae radix using Penicillium decumbens naringinase, where enhanced production of more bioactive bacalein and wogonin was achieved via enzymatic deglycosylation of bacalin and wogonoside.

Background: This study aims to develop a risk assessment scale to assess and quantify risk of hepatic encephalopathy in cirrhotic patients. Methods: Data were derived from two Delphi rounds and a cross-sectional survey of 276 cirrhotic patients. The minimal consensus were a mean score 3.5 on a scale of 1 to 5, and a coefficient of variation 0.25. The reliability and validity of the scale were validated by a cross-sectional survey. Results: After two Delphi rounds and item analysis, a final 23-item scale covered two dimensions. The total Cronbach’s αretest Cronbach’s α, interrater Cronbach’s α and split-half Cronbach’s α were higher than 0.7, showing an acceptable reliability. The AUC was 0.792, and the sensitivity and specificity were 83.9% and 59.6%, respectively, indicating that the scale had a good predictive validity. Conclusion: This scale may be a promising tool for estimating and ranking risk of hepatic encephalopathy. Future research is necessary to apply it in hepatic encephalopathy.