[Study on screening cardioprotective components from Zhishi Xiebai Guizhi Tang]

Zhishi Xiebai Guizhi Tang (ZSXBGZT), a famous traditional Chinese formula from Synopsis of Golden Chamber, composing of five herbal medicines, has been routinely used for the therapy of cardiovascular diseases in clinical. However, the active components of ZSXBGZT have not been investigated thoroughly. A reliable cell model was established by H2O2-induced injury in neonatal rat cardiomyocytes (NRCMs), with fluorescein diacetate (FDA) labelling the live cells, to screen cardioprotective substances. Seven components were found to have obvious cardioprotective effects through screening ZSXBGZT, Vc as the positive control. Eleven compounds were identified by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) from the active components C18, D14, D15, D16 and E09, and 6 of them were investigated further, which showed that hesperidin, neohesperidin and eriodictyol could protect NRCMs from H2O2-induced injury. In particular, eriodictyol showed significant cardioprotective effects in a dose-response relationship.