Pharmacological properties of traditional medicine (XXIX): effect of Hange-shashin-to and the combinations of its herbal constituents on rat experimental colitis.

Hange-shashin-to (HST) has been used as an herbal formula to treat inflammatory ulcerative gut diseases complicated with psychoneurosis in Japanese traditional Kampo medicine. The aim of the present study is to clarify anti-colitic effect of HST using a model of colitis induced by intracolonic instillation of 2,4,6-trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS) in rats, and to evaluate the pharmaceutical properties of its herbal components. The colonic damage was elucidated by macroscopic damage scores, colon wet weight and area of mucosal necrosis. Orally administered HST significantly reduced the colonic damage. Other rats were orally treated with single-component berberine (BE), baicalin (BA), glycyrrhizin (GL) or saponin fraction of ginsenosides (GS), or with the mixture (TL) of BA, BE, GL and GS, or with the combinations of BA plus BE (BA-BE), or that of GL plus GS (GL-GS). Oral treatment of TL ameliorated colitis observations. However, no effects were found in the treatment of single-component BA, BE, GL or GS, whereas the GL-GS combination ameliorated the colitis. These results suggest that HST might suppress inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and imply that there will be a potential benefit in the traditionally derived herbal combination.