Study On The Bioactivity Of Free Radicals In Moxibustion Smoke

Moxibustion has a history of thousands of years in China Moxibustion has been used for thousands of years in China. As a treasure of Chinese traditional medicine, moxibustion has been incorporated into modern medicine and applied to the modern personal medical care and hospital therapy. In recent years, a lot of scholars began to study on the mechanism of moxibustion therapy. They found that the warm effect, radiation effect, moxibustion burning smoke effect of moxibustion are the main factors. People did a lot of work about the compounds in moxa and the new compounds in moxibustion burning smoke, but we neglected the two aspects of moxibustion, one is the existence of a large number of substances which are unstable and hard to detected, the other is the material foundation of heat and radiation effect.Our research group engaged in the research of material basis and mechanism of moxibustion and has achieved certain achievements. On the basis of previous studies, we continue study on the the unstable substances in moxibustion burning smoke and the material foundation of heat and radiation effect of moxibustion. The specific works are as follows:1. The semiquinone radicals can be reappearred by hydroquinone in alkaline condition, we can study the cytotoxicity of free radicals in moxibustion burning smoke by use the reappearred simiquinone radials. Add the alkaline solution and acid solution of hydroquinones into the 96-well plates in which are L6, Hep G2 and A549 separately. 24 h later, we carried out cytotoxicity tests by MTT method, fluorescent staining method and flow cytometric method to detect whether the radical samples have toxic effect on L6, Hep G2 and A549 cells. Results show that in the concentration of 12.5~200 ?mol/L, the same concentration of hydroquinone in different p H conditions have different cell toxicity interaction. Under acid condition, the hydroquinone has low cytotoxicity, while in alkaline, hydroquinone has high cytotoxicity which is significantly increase compare with the acid condition. It shows that free radicals are the key factors of moxibustion smoke's toxic effect.2. We use the same method to reappearance semiquinone radicals as the second experiment, then carry out the antiviral experiment. Use MDCK which treated with monolayer cultured as the carrier of H3N2. Mix the acid and alkaline solution of hydroquinone with H3N2 flu virus suspension, 6 h later, add the mixture into the 96-well plates covered with MDCK cells, we divide the plates into four groups: the blank group, the virus group, the acid group and the alkaline group. We can compare the antiviral effect of different concentration of hydroquinone in different p H combined with microscopyobservation, MTT colorimetric method and hemagglutination assay. According to the data, in certain concentration, the antiviral effect of hydroquinone in alkaline condition is better than it under acid condition. All of these show that the moxibustion burning smoke has anti-influenza virus effect. So moxa smoke can be used for environmental disinfection when the viral epidemic exploded.3. Using the method of solvent extaction method and silica gel column chromatography to separate the alkane from Artemisia argyi gathered from six different growing period, then use GC-MS method to analysis the alkanes in qualitative and quantitative. According to the results, we detected and ensure 21 konds of alkanes in the extracting solution, 19 kinds of these are n-alkanes. Among them, the content of hentriacontane has the highest lever, and make up 63.61 percent of total alkane, next are nonacosane and tritriacontane can make up 15.85 and 6.85 percent respectively. In these data, total alkane content can reach 936.19 ?g/g. We can get the conclusion of that the content of alkane is highest of Artemisia argyi gathered around grain in ear.