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Anti-inflammatory effects
of ginsenosides from Panax ginseng and their
structural analogs
Jongsun Park1 and Jae Youl Cho2*
1College
of Medicine, Chungnam University, Daejeon 301-131, Korea.
2School
of
Bioscience and Biotechnology and Institute of Bioscience and
Biotechnology, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon
200-701, Korea.
*Corresponding author. E-mail:
jaecho@kangwon.ac.kr.
Tel.: +82-33-250-6562. Fax: +82-33-253-6560.
Accepted
23 July, 2009 |
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Ginsenosides (G) are biologically active saponin compounds
found in Panax ginseng. Although these compounds are
reported to possess numerous biological activities, recent
issues have arisen regarding their immunosuppressive and
anti-inflammatory roles in inflammatory cells. This is
because 1) inflammation, managed by a large amount of
different pro-inflammatory mediators such as cytokines,
nitric oxide (NO) and prostaglandin (PG)E2, is
now considered as a principle cause of most immunological
diseases, such as cancer and autoimmunity; and 2) some
ginsenosides (e.g., G-Rb1, G-Rd and G-Rh2) can modulate
these phenomena effectively by inhibiting the production of
inflammatory mediators through suppressing the activation of
nuclear factor (NF)-kB and its upstream signaling cascade. This review, therefore,
discusses the in vitro and in vivo
anti-inflammatory effects of ginsenosides in detail and
proposes the possibility that ginsenosides, or their
derivatives, can be developed as pharmaceutically useful
drugs against NF-kB-mediated
inflammatory diseases.
Key
words:
Ginseng saponin, ginsenoside, inflammation, tumor necrosis
factor-a,
nitric oxide, prostaglandin. |
