Gastrodia Herba is one of the popular drugs to treat headache, dizziness, pediatric epilepsy, convulsion, and tetanus in oriental medical clinic and it has been reported that it represents anticonvulsive, sedative, and analgesic effets. In the study, the author examined the antihypertensive effect of Gastrodia water extracts.
Blood pressure was measured by tail-cuff method after administrating 5g/㎏ of the extract to conscious restrained SHRs p.o. and observed that blood pressure was lowered to 8.7±1.9% maximally at 2 hrs after oral adminstration. To study the mechanism of this antihypertensive effet, if there is a direct effect on vascular dilatation or an inhibitory effect on the ACE(Angiotensin Converting Enzyme) activity was observed. There was no direct effect on vascular dilatation of the isolated aorta of rabbit after contraction induced by phenylephrine(2.0㎍/㎖), but it was observed that 1.0×10 exp (-1)g/㎖ of Gastrodia water extract inhibited 36.9±3.2% of ACE activity in vitro
According to the above results, the author concluded that there is a antihypertensive effect in Gastrodia water extract and this effect may act through inhibition of ACE activity.
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