1, pharmacology
Cactus plants contain a variety of more complex chemical composition, mainly containing organic acids, sterols, alkaloids, flavonoids, sugars, terpenes and so on. Therefore, cactus as a biological resource, its roots, stems, flowers extracts in health care and medicine has a wide range of prospects for application, is now the main research on the cactus in recent years on the application of the following.
2, antimicrobial effect
There are literature reports, with cactus water extract and ethanol extract of microorganisms contaminated with food for inhibition and killing effect of the test, the results show that the cactus extract of Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, Escherichia contorta, Aspergillus flavus, and other common food contamination bacteria have a very strong inhibition and killing effect. Bacterial culture test with plant extracts of the whole plant, 95% ethanol extracts with the highest efficiency, especially on the inhibition of Staphylococcus aureus is the most significant, and the 18 penicillin-resistant strains of this bacterium also has a high degree of inhibition. As the problem of secondary contamination of food has increasingly been widely concerned by countries around the world, the discovery of the antimicrobial effect of cactus extracts provides a valuable reference for food developers and researchers to develop new types of food preservatives and antiseptics.
3, anti-aging
Senescence (also known as aging) is a very complex biological process, is the body in the degenerative period of decline in function and physiological activity disorders of the integrated performance of the body's intrinsic characteristics, but at the same time is an irreversible process. Aging is the inevitable development of life. About the study of aging, so far, more than 200 kinds of doctrines have been put forward. The stress theory of aging suggests that stressors that act continuously on the organism, such as cold, excessive reproductive output, plateau hypoxia, radiation, and psychological stress, are important factors contributing to the aging of the organism. In the experiment with D-galactose aging model mice, cactus extract not only improved the stress resistance of aged mice, but also significantly prolonged the swimming time and high-temperature resistance of aged mice in normobaric hypoxia, swimming, cold and high-temperature resistance experiments, increased the survival time of aged mice in normobaric hypoxia, and reduced the low-temperature mortality of mice in low temperature environment. In addition, the anti-aging effect of cactus was observed by taking body weight, immune organ weight, liver and brain malondialdehyde (MDA), whole blood and brain glutathione peroxidase (GSH-PX), and serum and brain superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity as the indexes, and it was found that cactus in both large and small doses could reduce the content of MDA in the liver and brain tissues of the mice (p 0.01), and increase the content of GSH-PX and serum and brain GSH-PX in the blood and brain, and increase the content of MDA in the liver and brain tissues of the mice (p 0.01). -PX and SOD activity in serum and brain, and impeded the decrease of body weight and thymus index in mice. This experiment concluded that cactus extract was effective in preventing the appearance of several signs of aging in mice caused by D-galactose and improving the functional status of mice. The experiment suggests that cactus has the potential to become a new type of anti-stress, anti-aging health products
.4. Enhancement of the immune system
The immune system is divided into two parts: humoral immunity and cellular immunity, and the thymus gland and the spleen are the important immune organs of the organism. The main function of the thymus is to produce T-lymphocytes and secrete thymosin, which is mainly involved in cellular immunity; humoral immunity is mainly played by B-lymphocytes, and there are abundant lymphocytes and macrophages in the spleen, which are involved in immune response. However, the proportion of B lymphocytes in the spleen is larger, accounting for about 60%, so the spleen is more closely related to humoral immunity. Therefore, the spleen weight and splenic index of the spleen, increased phagocytosis of macrophages, and increased the total number of peripheral blood leukocytes, suggest that cactus extract has the effect of promoting antibody production, enhancing the function of the reticuloendothelial system, and significantly improving the body's humoral immune function. However, it had little effect on the thymus index and lymphocyte conversion rate, showing that its effect on cellular immunity was not obvious.
5, alleviate the role of obesity
Obesity is a common condition, one of the main reasons is due to the metabolism mediation function is damaged, caused by excess body fat. Obesity not only affects the physical appearance and activities, but also easy to complicate other potentially fatal diseases, such as hypertension, coronary heart disease, diabetes and so on. Therefore, how to effectively treat obesity is also the world's research hotspot and the problem to be overcome. Experiments have shown that the ethanol crude extract of dried cactus powder and the aqueous extract of fresh cactus can promote the hydrolysis of isolated animal adipose tissue and increase the release of FFA, and the flavonoids contained in cactus have a vitamin P-like effect, which can treat the brittleness of the blood vessels and vascular osmotic pressure abnormalities, etc. The triterpenes are required by the human body. And triterpenes are substances needed by the human body, they can directly regulate the body's secretion function and regulate the activity of lipase, have hormone-like regulation of lipase, promote the decomposition of fat in the liver and tissues, inhibit the synthesis of fat in the liver.
6, the application of diabetes treatment
There are literature reports that cactus extract has the effect of lowering blood sugar. In a test conducted in a tetroxin diabetes model established with Wistar as the model animal, it was found that; the extract of Cactus has no significant effect on the blood glucose of normal rats, but it can significantly reduce the blood glucose of rats with tetroxin-induced diabetes and its hypoglycemic effect is related to the dose of the drug administered. Its high dose also significantly reduced 24h urine output in diabetic rats. Meanwhile, cactus juice was used in the treatment of diseased rats based on a rat diabetes model established by streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetes. The results showed that the glucose amount and serum insulin level of the diabetic rats in the administered group returned to normal, while the control group remained abnormal, indicating that cactus extract has the effect of treating diabetes and improving insulin resistance. In recent years, studies have shown that insulin resistance is one of the main pathogenic mechanisms of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, and insulin resistance also brings many difficulties in the treatment of diabetic patients. Utilizing the therapeutic efficacy of cactus extract in insulin resistance provides the basis for clinical treatment of diabetes mellitus, and also broadens the way to develop new types of diabetes mellitus therapeutic drugs.
7, as the application of radiotherapy adjuvant drugs
A major problem in the treatment of clinical malignant tumors is that many chemotherapeutic drugs inhibit the hematopoietic function of bone marrow of the patients while killing the tumor cells, especially for the inhibition of WBC is very obvious, which leads to serious infections and even death of the patients. Therefore, the search for an effective adjuvant chemotherapeutic agent with low toxicity is an urgent problem in the field of tumor therapy. It has been reported in the literature that cactus extract can significantly increase the number of WBCs in the blood of healthy mice in the pathological model of WBC reduction caused by cyclophosphamide; moreover, in the cyclophosphamide group, cactus extract can significantly antagonize the reduction of WBCs caused by cyclophosphamide, which suggests that cactus extract has a certain role in alleviating the reduction of WBCs induced by radiotherapy, chemotherapy and other chemical factors, and it is a kind of chemotherapy adjuvant with certain developmental value. It is a kind of adjuvant drug for radiotherapy and chemotherapy with certain development value.
8, antioxidant effect
Biomedical point of view, the occurrence and development of many diseases in the body and free radicals triggered by lipid peroxidation in the body. CCL3 and O2, which are formed by the decomposition of CCL4, are important causes of liver damage. It has been reported in the literature that cactus decoction can significantly inhibit the production of malondialdehyde (MDA) in the liver homogenate of mice and rats caused by CCL4, and that the administration of cactus by gavage can also significantly reduce the content of malondialdehyde in liver injury caused by CCL4. Also, the extraction of superoxide dismutase-Cu-Zn-SOD from wild cactus has been reported.
9. Other
In addition to the above applications, cactus has also been studied and reported in the treatment of gastric diseases, lowering blood pressure and promoting blood clotting. However, as a traditional Chinese medicine, the identification and extraction of its active ingredients and the revelation of its mechanism of action are still urgent problems in the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine. In conclusion, cactus, as a natural plant resource, has a broad application prospect and great development potential in the treatment of anti-aging and various diseases.