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Anemarrhena asphodeloides is an herb widely used to treat symptoms associated with diabetes in traditional Chinese medicine. However, its key components and metabolites have low bioavailability and poor host absorption. To clarify the anti-diabetic mechanism of A. asphodeloides extract (AAE), we examined the anti-diabetic effects of AAE in rats with diabetes induced by a high-fat diet and streptozotocin. Faeces levels of the main components and metabolites of AAE were significantly higher than levels in plasma, which indicated that gut microbiota might play important roles in its anti-diabetic effect. Microbiological studies showed that unabsorbed components increased the diversity of the gut microbiota, enriched potentially beneficial bacteria, and suppressed potentially harmful bacteria. In vitro studies showed that AAE promoted the proliferation of Blautia coccoides, a bacterium with positive implication for diabetes, in a dose-dependent manner. AAE also promoted pancreatic cell regeneration and restored the function of pancreatic islet cells via peroxiredoxin 4 overexpression. Overall, these results suggest that AAE alleviates diabetes via modulating gut microbiota and protein expression.

Six new compounds, including four new lignans, dipsalignan A (1), B–D (3–5), and two new bis-iridoid glycoside dimmers, dipsanosides M (7) and N (8), together with two known compounds (2) and (6), have been isolated from the roots of Dipsacus asper Wall. Their structures were established on the basis of spectroscopic data (MS, 1D, 2D NMR, and CD) and chemical methods. All the isolated compounds were tested against human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) integrase inhibition activities, and only compounds 1, 2, 7, and 8 displayed weak activities.

A simple, accurate and reliable high performance liquid chromatography coupled with photodiode array detection (HPLC-DAD) method was developed and then successfully applied for simultaneous quantitative analysis of eight compounds, including chlorogenic acid (1), (R/S)-flavanomarein (2), butin-7-O-β-d-glucopyranoside (3), isookanin (4), taxifolin (5), 5,7,3′,5′-tetrahydroxyflavanone-7-O-β-d-glucopyranoside (6), marein (7) and okanin (8), in 23 batches of snow chrysanthemum of different seed provenance and from various habitats. The results showed total contents of the eight compounds in the samples with seed provenance from Keliyang (Xinjiang, China), are higher than in samples from the other five provenances by 52.47%, 15.53%, 19.78%, 21.17% and 5.06%, respectively, which demonstrated that provenance has a great influence on the constituents in snow chrysanthemum. Meanwhile, an ultra performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization and quadrupole time-of-flight-mass spectrometry (UPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS) was also employed to rapidly separate and identify flavonoids and phenolic acids in snow chrysanthemum from Keliyang. As a result, a total of 30 constituents, including 26 flavonoids and four phenolic acids, were identified or tentatively identified based on the exact mass information, the fragmentation characteristics, and retention times of eight reference standards. This work may provide an efficient approach to comprehensively evaluate the quality of snow chrysanthemum.

The article analyzes the anti-tumor effect of Icariside II (IcaS), a natural prenylated flavonol glycoside, on human breast cancer MCF7 cells. It reports that IcaS enhanced the expression level of Fas and the Fas associated death domain (FADD) and activated caspase-8 which suggests the involvement of the extrinsic apoptosis pathway. It suggests that IcaS induced apoptosis in MCF7 cells involving both the intrinsic and extrinsic signaling pathways.