Forsythia suspensa [(Thunb.) Vahl (Oleaceae)] as a plant widely distributed in China, Korea, Japan, and many European countries, is a well-known ingredient in traditional Chinese food (Guo et al., 2021;Jiang et al., 2020). Phillyrin, a natural lignan, is the main bioactive component of F. suspensa. Studies on phillyrin have shown that it is found mainly in the leaves and fruits of the plant F. suspensa (Kim et al., 2000;Xia et al., 2011): phillyrin can be extracted by maceration, Soxhlet, and microwave-assisted extraction methods (Ma et al., 2020;Xu et al., 2019). Relevant reports indicated no acute toxicity of water or ethanol extract of the leaves of F. suspensa in mice, even at daily dose of 61.60 g/kg (Ai et al., 2011;Hou et al., 2016). Han et al. (2017) reported no acute toxicity of phillyrin (from the leaves of F. suspensa) in NIH mice (18.1 g/kg/day, p.o., for 14 days) or no sub-chronic toxicity of phillyrin in SD rats (0.54, 1.62, and 6.48 g/kg/day, p.o., for 30 days).Many Chinese medicines contain phillyrin, which is an active constituent found in many medicinal plants and certain functional foods. As a matter of fact, phillyrin is commonly used as an important ingredient in the food, beverage, and cosmetic industries (Li & Chen, 2005). Modern pharmacological studies have shown that phillyrin can perform a number of biological functions such as antioxidant (Wang et al., 2018), anti-inflammatory