Glycyrrhizae Radix et Rhizoma Processed by Sulfur Fumigation Damaged the Chemical Profile Accompanied by Immunosuppression and Liver Injury

Abstract

Glycyrrhizae Radix et Rhizoma (GRER) has been used as a medicinal plant and dietary supplements for its beneficial effect in immunomodulatory effects. Sulfur fumigation (SF) processing was widely used in the storage and maintenance of Chinese medicine because of its convenience and cheapness. However, the disadvantage of SF has been reported, but the systematic study of SF on GRER was deficient. In this paper, the active ingredients, sulfur-fumigated products, immunomodulatory effect, and liver injury of SF-GRER were studied. After SF, the liquiritin decreased from 4.49 ± 0.03 mg/g to 3.94 ± 0.08 mg/g (P<0.01). Compared with the NSF-GRER group, the SF-GRER group showed a decreased immunoregulation in the thymus index, spleen index, and serum IL-6 and SOD levels (P<0.05). After 2 weeks of continuous intragastric administration of SF-GRER in healthy mice, the level of serum aspartate aminotransferase (AST) significantly increased (P<0.05) and the area of liver lesion significantly increased compared with the NSF-GRER (P<0.05) group. The sulfonated products (m/z, 631.13) corresponding to liquiritin apioside (m/z, 551.17) and isoliquiritin apioside (m/z, 551.17) were screened out in SF-GRER by using UPLC-Orbitrap-MS. The sulfonated products provided in this paper were discovered for the first time and could be powerfully applied for the identification of SF-GRER. SF destroyed the chemical composition of GRER, inhibited immunoregulation, and induced liver injury. The feasibility of this processing method needs to be reconsidered.

Codonopsis radix: a review of resource utilisation, postharvest processing, quality assessment, and its polysaccharide composition

“…( Chen et al, 2017 ). Despite the aforementioned effects, recent research has revealed that the consumption of sulfur fumigated medicinal materials can induce adverse symptoms such as coughing and chest tightness in patients, posing a potential risk to their health and compromising the bioactivity of the metabolites, thereby diminishing the quality of these medicinal materials ( Zhu et al, 2015 ; Jiang et al, 2020 ). Therefore, China, the United States and Europe have successively issued standards to limit the content of SO 2 in TCM ( Xu et al, 2020 ).…”

Simultaneous determination of twenty-nine active compounds in fuzhengjiedu granules by HPLC-QQQ-MS/MS

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Cultural belief and medicinal plants in treating COVID 19 patients of Western Colombia

“…Recently, in China a study indicates that the Radix glycyrrhizae rhizome [ 40 , 46 ] is an option that is important for its healing properties. Moreover, according to Chinese guidelines it can be used as a guide for treatment of COVID-19 patients.…”