• Title/Summary/Keyword: Saussurea costus

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Evaluation of Pharmacognostical Characters and Comparative Morphoanatomical Study of Saussurea costus (Falc.) Lipchitz and Arctium lappa L. Roots

  • Pandey, Madan Mohan;Rastogi, Subha;Rawat, Ajay Kumar Singh
    • Natural Product Sciences
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    • v.13 no.4
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    • pp.304-310
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    • 2007
  • Saussurea costus (Falc.) Lipchitz syn S. lappa C. B. Clarke (commonly known as 'Kuth') belonging to the family Asteraceae is a well known medicinal plant which finds wide usage in different indigenous systems of medicine of India, China, Korea & Tibet. In different folk medicines the roots of S. costus are used to treat various disorders like ulcer, stomachache, malaria, leprosy, dysentery and toothache. However due to over exploitation, it has become endangered and has become the concern of different governmental bodies in India. The increasing demand of this endangered Himalayan species has resulted in a situation where it is often substituted, knowingly or unknowingly, by other morphologically similar species. Arctium lappa, belonging to the same family, is one such plant that has often been found to be present in the market samples of 'Kuth'. The present study was thus carried out and morphoanatomical characters, physicochemical as well as chemical parameters were developed for proper identification of roots of S. costus and its differenciation from A. lappa as well as authentication of the commercial market samples. The detailed morphoanatomical studies revealed that roots of S. costus can be distinguished from A. lappa on the basis of some important microscopial characters eg. the schizogenous resin ducts observed in roots of S. costus, were absent in A. lappa.. Besides, the HPTLC fingerprint profile showed a distinct band at Rf. 0.72 in S. costus, which was totally absent in A. lappa and a band at $R_f$ 0.64 in A. lappa which was absent in S. costus Chlorogenic acid, used as a chemical marker for HPTLC analysis, was estimated to be 0.077% in S. costus as compared to 0.107% in A. lappa. Thus these detailed pharmacognostical parameters can be successfully used to distinguish between roots of S. costus and A. lappa.

Anti-obesity Activity of Extract from Saussurea lappa (목향 추출물의 항비만 활성 효과)

  • Yoon, Tae-Sook;Sung, Yoon-Young;Jang, Ja-Young;Yang, Won-Kyung;Ji, Yun-Ui;Kim, Ho-Kyoung
    • Korean Journal of Medicinal Crop Science
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    • v.18 no.3
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    • pp.151-156
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    • 2010
  • Obesity has become one of the main public health problems. Saussurea lappa (Asteraceae), syn Aucklandia lappa and Saussurea costus, is a well-known herbal medicine that has been used for treating various ailments, such as inflammatory and gastrointestinal diseases. The present study examined the anti-obesity effect of S. lappa extract (SLE) in 3T3-L1 adipocytes and high fat diet (HFD)-induced obese mouse model. SLE significantly inhibited the differentiation from preadipocytes to adipocytes of cultured 3T3-L1 in dose-dependent manner. In addition, SLE significantly decreased the body weight gain and the food efficiency ratio of mice fed HFD during 9 weeks. Further study must be performed for the pharmacological mechanism and safety of SLE as well as the identification of active compound in SLE. Our results revealed that S. lappa suppresses the adipogenesis in cultured cells and the obesity in rodent models. Therefore, S. lappa may be useful toward the development of new potent anti-obesity drugs.