Dongdong Wang, Shu Wang and Wenhua Chen
The objective of this study was to isolate active alkaloids from the Bulbus Fritillariae Cirrhosae (BFC), to evaluate their anti-tussive to find the highly active substance from the BFC for further new drug development.
Materials and methods: The BFC was extracted with chloroform: methanol and alkaloids were isolated by phytochemical methods. The anti-tussive activity was investigated using ammonia induced mice coughing.
Results: The seven alkaloids (1)∼(7) were isolated from the BFC and the structure were determined. The seven alkaloids significantly inhibited mice’s frequency of cough induced by ammonia, increased mice’s latent period of cough and show activity dose-dependently. The inhibitions of cough number of these alkaloids are 65.33% (1), 60.28% (2), 35.06% (3), 37.26% (4), 56.37% (5), 57.80% (6), 59.07% (7). The results of the present study provide a convincing proof to put BFC as one of the most popular antitussive Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in China.