Control of preweaning diarrhea in piglets by acupuncture and Chinese medicine

Preweaning diarrhea in piglets is a very common disease. Even thought vaccination and antibiotics are used widely for controlling the disease nowadays, it is still a serious production problem. Therefore, the search for a new medication that is both cheaper and more effective is of major importance. During the last year, acupuncture and Chinese medicine have been evaluated for this purpose. The results are summarized as follows: 1) Oral administration of 0.5 g of Ko-ken-huang-lien-huang-chin-tang (pueraria, coptis, scute and licorice combination) to piglets at 1 day old was effective in reducing incidence of infection (P less than 0.1) and increasing the body weight gain (P less than 0.05) during the first 10 days of life. Gentamycin or aqua-acupuncture at day 1 of life had no prophylactic value. 2) Piglets with preweaning diarrhea were treated by aqua-acupuncture at Chang-Chiang point (VG 1, or so called Chiao-Chao in traditional pig charts) with 0.2 ml of 3% saline, or by oral administration of 0.5 g of Ko-ken-huang-lien-huang-chin-tang or by injection of gentamycin (10 mg/piglet) twice a day for 1-3 days. These treatments significantly reduced the duration of illness (P less than 0.01) when compared with the control groups which received 0.5 g lactose orally. These results indicate that both acupuncture treatment and Chinese medicine have a high clinical value for controlling piglet diarrhea.

The evaluation of therapeutic efficacy of hachimi-jio-gan (traditional Chinese medicine) to mouse hereditary cataract

This study was of a series of the evaluation of Hachimi-Jio-Gan (Rehmannia Eight Formula, pa-wei-ti-huang-wan or Bawei dihuang wan) to the various cataracts. In this study, the drug was evaluated for its therapeutic efficacy to mouse hereditary cataract from the delay effect of cataract appearance age and the suppression rates of variation of some biochemical parameters. The dose of 200 mg of Hachimi-Jio-Gan/day/100 g of mouse body weight significantly delayed the cataract appearance age by 4 days as compared to that of non-treated group. We estimated that the delay effect of 4 days in mouse may be corresponded to 13.9 years, when it was converted into the case of human. This drug also suppressed variation of sodium and potassium ions level in the lens with cataractogenesis. Furthermore, the drug dramatically reactivated the sodium-potassium ATPase activity damaged with the cataract formation, and also had a slight action of reducing agent. From these facts, we presumed that the drug may have a prophylactic efficacy to the cataract caused by the inhibition of sodium-potassium ATPase activity and also the oxidation of lens protein.

In vitro induction of differentiation in HL-60 leukemic cell line by clerodendron fragrans

The promyelocytic cell line HL-60 could be induced to differentiate into morphologically and functionally mature monocytoid cells (up to 20%) following exposure to the Chinese herb Clerodendron Fragrans (1 mg/ml). This effect was time dependent and appeared to work synergistically with interferon-r in this promotion of differentiation. Our study suggests that Clerodendron Fragrans has potential therapeutic value for the treatment of certain acute myelocytic leukemia putatively caused by a block in the myeloid differentiation process.