A new approach to investigate the pharmacokinetics of traditional chinese medicine YL2000.

Much progress has been made in the pharmacology of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). However, the question on how to investigate pharmacokinetics of TCM extract remains. In this study, we selected a new TCM extract YL2000 developed in our laboratory as the research object and investigated both the pharmacokinetics of baicalin and berberine in YL2000 and the pharmacodynamics of YL2000 in febrile rats. The correlation analysis between the time-concentration curves of baicalin and berberine and the time-effect curve of YL2000 was conducted in plasma by statistical methods. The results showed that the time-effect data of anti-pyretic effect of YL2000 had a negative correlation (r = -0.8312, P < 0.1) with the time-concentration data of baicalin in plasma, but had no correlation (r = 0.01368, P > 0.5) with berberine. These data suggested that baicalin could be selected as a marker of anti-pyretic effect, and that YL2000 could be used to treat fevers according to the disposition of baicalin in vivo. In this study, we also proposed that one or more active elements in TCM extracts could be selected to represent the pharmacokinetics of TCM extracts in vivo, combined with the pharmacodynamics of TCM extract.