Issue 19, 2018

Probing the Qi of traditional Chinese herbal medicines by the biological synthesis of nano-Au

Abstract

Herbal medicines with different Qi properties (the primary proxy of their therapeutic effects) are used in traditional Chinese medicine to maintain the harmony of vital forces in a human body. In the Western medicinal practice, the classification of Qi into four major families (“Si Qi” in Chinese Pinyin) is a challenging endeavor, especially by a simple non-reductionist approach. The method presented here is however able to distinguish the Qi of herbal medicines based on the measurements of several Qi-related features in a biological synthesis of nano-Au in herbal extracts: solution color, surface plasmon resonance properties, reaction time and nano-Au morphology. These Qi-related features on their own do not form sufficiently distinct clusters that are useful for the classification of the Qi-properties. The power of differentiation, however, is significantly improved when all the Qi-related features are considered together. The statistics of differentiation is encouraging, enabling us to develop a scheme which can classify all of the tested TCHMs into their respective Qi families. While this classification method was developed using a limited number of herbal medicines with known Qi properties, it has the potential to be applied as a scientific quick test to determine the Qi of new herbal medicines or herbal concoctions. It is our aspiration that this study can generate more interest in the development of non-reductionist approaches to modernize the understanding of TCHMs.

Graphical abstract: Probing the Qi of traditional Chinese herbal medicines by the biological synthesis of nano-Au

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
09 Jan 2018
Accepted
12 Apr 2018
First published
13 Apr 2018

J. Mater. Chem. B, 2018,6, 3156-3162

Probing the Qi of traditional Chinese herbal medicines by the biological synthesis of nano-Au

X. Fei, Q. Yao, J. Xie and J. Y. Lee, J. Mater. Chem. B, 2018, 6, 3156 DOI: 10.1039/C8TB00068A

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements