Isodon Japonicus(Burm.)Hara is perennial herb which belongs to a Lamiaceae.
It grows in the mountains and fields in various parts of our country and is also distributed in Russia, China and Japan.
Nowadays it is a tendency in the world to apply the traditional therapies widely for prevention and treatment of various diseases.
Therefore it is one of the important tasks for development of Koryo medicin to do research work on Koryo medicines, which were well-known with their good therapeutic effects from ancient times and employed a lot for the treatment of illnesses, as well as to find out and study new resources of koryomedicines so as to introduce them into clinical practice.
For the last 20 years, we have conducted a research work to develop Isodon Japonicus(Burm.)Hara, which is abundant in our country, as Koryo medicines and clarified some pharmacological actions of Isodon Japonicus.
Isodon Japonicus displays strong antibiotic effects against Staphylococcus aureus 209 P, Escherichia coli O55, Shigella flexner 2a, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus subtillis 6633, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Yersinia enterocolitica O5, Salmonella paratyphiA, Salmonella typhi, Staphylococcus aureus 337, Escherichia coli 48, Shigella Flexner 27 and Helicobacter Pylori.
Isodon Japonicus inhibits enterovirus such as Rotavirus-SA, Poliovirus-I, Coxsackie virus-B4.
Isodon Japonicus has anti-inflammatory effects against aseptic inflammatory edema, hyperplastic inflammation and alterative inflammation, inhibits the degranulation of mast cell, stabilizes the cell membrane, and constrains permeability of blood vessels.
Isodon Japonicus has antiulcer action against a rat of hydrochloric acid induced ulcer, a rat of hydrochloric acid plus aspirin induced ulcer, a rat of stress ulcer induced by restiction in water and a rat of pylorus ligation inducedulcer.
Isodon Japonicus does not affect on the gastric secretion in normal rat but decreases the amount of gastric juice, free acidity, free hydrochloric acid andpepsin raised by histamine in dose of intermediate efficiency.
Isodon Japonicus decreases the activity of urease, free acidity, amount of free hydrochloric acid and pepsin in the rat model of Helicobacter pylori infection, while it decreases the content of sialic acid in gastric juice in the rat model of pylorus ligation induced ulcer, while it increases the SOD, ATPand PGE2 but decreases MDA. in mucous membrane of stomach in the rat of stress ulcer induced by restiction in water, LD50 of Isodon Japonicus by oral administration was 99g/㎏ and Isodon Japonicus did'nt make any affection to the marrow chromosome in rat when administered 20g/㎏.
As a result of the clinical research on introduction of Isodon Japonicus for the sake of acute or chronic colitis and gastric or duodenal ulcer, based on the above mentioned experiments, it was proved that its therapeutic effect was very satisfying.
Now our department is going on intensifying the study on Isodon Japonicus in order to increase the effective rate in clinical practice, particularly, the drug form.
