| Puerariae radix (PR) is an exterior –resolving herb in traditional Chinese medicine．PR has been proven to have effects on quickening the blood and transform stasis in past several decades.In modern clinical, PR are widely used in hypertension, coronary disease , myocardial infaration, etc．Pharmacological studies have revealed that the active ingredients in PR are isoflavones, mainly Puerarin of which the aglycone is daidzein．Daidzein, daidzin and genistein having been proved protective effect on osteoporosis are also the constistuents of PR．So we theoretically presume that PR are effective to bone metabolism．But up to now, there is no report relative to the effect of PR and its isoflavones on osteoporosis or other diseases induced by estrogen deficiency in clinical．In fact, PR was applied to alleviate women menopausal symptom in China and Thailand one hundred years ago．So in present paper, we studied the effect of PR extractions on bone-Ca metabolism with ovariectomized rat models．The contents of this paper are following:1.Measurement of total isoflavones and puerarin in PRThe content of total isoflavones in PR was estimated by ultraviolet spectroscopy(UV)．The result indicated:the content of total isoflavones in PR-A is 33.38%,and 95.62% in PR-B．The content of Puerarin was estimated by high performance liquid chromatography(HPLC)．The result indicated:the content of Puerarin in PR-A is 14.14%,and 89.69% in PR-B．2 .Functional studies on the effect of PR on climacteric osteoporosisNinety Female SD rats, three -month old, were ovariectomized bilateraliy under anesthesia．Five days later, animals were orally administrated with PR-A10mg/kg(OVX-A-10), PR-A 20mg/kg(OVX-A-20), PR-A 40mg/kg(OVX-A-40), PR-B5mg/kg(OVX-B-5) , PR-B10mg/kg(OVX-B-10), PR-B20mg/kg(OVX-B-20) or diethylstilbestrol(OVX-E) respectively for 3 months. The Sham and OVX group were orally administrated with distilled water. The tibial BMC, femoral BMD, bone biodynamics and other parameters, such as the content of Ca,P,Mg,Zn in tibia, ALP activity, were detected after 3 months. The result showed:(1) Comparied with OVX group, Ca content of tibia in OVX-A-20,OVX-A-40,OVX-B-10 and OVX-B-20 groups was ehanced by 52.7%,72.9%,72.1% and 76.7%, respectively(P<0.01). (2)Comparied with OVX group , femoral BMD in OVX-A-40,OVX-B-10 and OVX-B-20 groups were tibial BMC and Ca content in PR groups were significantly enhanced by 4.7%,4.5% and 5.8%(P<0.05,P<0.01),respectively. (3) The humeral strength in PR groups was greater than those in OVX group, and the strength of OVX-A-40 and OVX-B-20 groups was improved the most, with the value of 4.4%and 4.7%(P<0.01)； (4) ALP activity in serum was decreased significantly in PR group comparing to that in OVX group. This suggested that PR can inhibit the high transition situation of bone metabolism induced by estrogen deficiency. Therefore we can conclude:(1) PR has protective effect on climacteric osteoporosis；(2) The protective effect of PR to climacteric osteoporosis is correlative to the PR dose. The lowest effective dose of PR-A and PR-B is 40mg/kg and 10mg/kg,respectively；(3) The total isoflavones has protective effect on climacteric osteoporosis and puerarin is the main functional ingredient to prevent climacteric osteoporosis. 3 Acute toxic test of PRTwenty mice (ten female, ten male), 18~22g, were divided randomly into two groups :PR-A group and PR-B group. Both groups were orally administrated with PR in a dose of 600mg/kg just for one time. And the death rate of the mice in two weeks was counted．The result showed that no mice were dead in two weeks because of the administration of PR．So the LD50 of PR is beyond 600mg/kg, and it has no obvious toxicant．These results suggested that PR may represent a potential alternative medicine for Estrogen replacement therapy(ERT) in the prevention of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women.
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