Study on intestinal absorption of steamed notoginseng

SHEN Wen-wen; QIU Shou-bei; TANG Dao-quan; CHEN Bin

Abstract：Objective:To study the intestinal absorption characteristics of steamed notoginseng in vivo to provide experimental evidence for elucidating the mechanism of steaming process of notoginseng.Methods:In vitro Caco-2 cell model and in situ intestinal perfusion model were adopted to determine the absorption of ethanol and n-butanol extracts for comparative analysis.Six active ingredients from steamed notoginseng including ginsenosides Rg6,F4,Rk3,Rh4,Rk1,Rg5 were chosen as the detection and characterization indicators to study the intestinal absorption permeability of steamed notoginseng in vivo.Results:In the Caco-2 cell transport experiment,except ginsenoside Rk3,the apparent permeability coefficients (Papp) of the other five characteristic saponins obtained from the two mixtures showed no significant difference (P ＜ 0.05).The Papp values of total saponins from the AP side to BL side were both more than 10-6 cm · s-1,which indicated that the intestinal absorption of steamed notoginseng was good.The apparent permeability (PBA/PAB) of total ginsenosides obtained from steamed notoginseng were both above 1.5,suggesting that the transmembrane transport mode of total ginsenosides may be passive diffusion.In the intestinal perfusion experiment,the effective permeability (P*eff) values were all more than 0.5,which revealed that the saponins from steamed notoginseng were absorbed well.The Pe*ff values of the two mixtures with three various concentrations presented a certain concentration-dependent manner.The values of effective permeation coefficients at different concentrations existed significant differences in all segments,indicating that there may exist other transport mechanisms in addition to passive diffusion for the absorption of saponins.Statistical analysis showed that there were significant differences in the P*eff values of ginsenosides Rk3,Rk1,Rg5 between the ethanol and n-butanol extracts (P ＜ 0.05).Conclusion:The intestinal absorption of steamed notoginseng in vivo is good when using six active ingredients as the detection and characterization indicators.The absorption of some ginsenosides in the ethanol and n-butanol extracts existed differences,which may be due to the impact of certain non-butanol extract in the ethanol extract.