Pharmacological studies of Panax ginseng root: estimation of pharmacological actions of Panax ginseng root.

Ginseng root has been utilized for thousands of years in China, Korea and Japan as an important drug in Chinese medicine. Chemical researches on Ginseng root have been reported by a number of investigators (1-8), especially Shibata and his co-workers have investigated the chemical structure of Japan-cultivate-Panax gieseng saponins and sapogenins (9-16). Several papers concerning the extracts of Ginseng root have been reported in the pharmacological fields (17-21). Petkov (22-24) reported the stimulant effects of Ginseng root on the central nervous system, the respiration and the adrenal cortex. It was reported that Ginseng root stimulates gastric and intestinal motility (25), corrects nutritional disorders (26) and depresses mean arterial blood pressure (27). Wood et al. (28) investigated the effect of Ginseng root on cardiovascular system in the dog. It is very difficult and costly to study systematically detailed pharmacological effects of oriental plants. In our laboratory, a systematic analysis of pharmacological properties of a chemical compound have been studied (29). This analytical method was appliedto the study of Ginseng root saponins.