Epimedii Herba: A Promising Herbal Medicine for Neuroplasticity

Epimedii Herba (EH) is an herbal medicine originating from several plants of the genus Epimedium. It is a major therapeutic option for kidney yang deficiency syndrome, which is closely related to androgen hormones and also has been used to treat hemiplegia following a stroke in traditional medicine of Korea and PR China. To date, many clinical and basic researches of EH have shown the activities on functional recovery from brain diseases. Recently, neuroplasticity, which is the spontaneous reaction of the brain in response to diseases, has been shown to accelerate functional recovery. In addition, androgen hormones including testosterone are known to be the representative of neuroplasticity factors in the brain recovery processes. In this review, we described the neuro-pharmacological activities of EH, focusing on neuroplasticity. Thirty-three kinds of papers from MEDLINE/PubMed, EMBASE, and CNKI were identified and analyzed. We categorized the results into five types based on neuroplasticity mechanisms and presented the definition of each category and briefly described the results of these papers. Altogether, we can suggest that neuroplasticity is a novel viewpoint for guiding future brain research of EH and provide the evidence for the development of new clinical applications using EH in the treatment of brain diseases. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.