Cordycepin reduces weight through regulating gut microbiota in high-fat diet-induced obese rats.

BACKGROUND: An increasing number of studies have shown that obesity is the key etiological agent of cardiovascular diseases, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes and several kinds of cancer and that gut microbiota change was one of the reasons suffering from obesity. At present, the gut microbiota has gained increased attention as a potential energy metabolism organ. Our recent study reported that cordycepin, a major bioactive component separated from Cordyceps militaris, prevented body weight gain in mice fed a high-fat diet directly acting to adipocytes, however, the effect of cordycepin regulating gut microbiota keeps unknown. METHODS: In this research, we synthesized cordycepin (3-deoxyadenosine) by chemical methods and verified that cordycepin reduces body weight gain and fat accumulation around the epididymis and the kidneys of rats fed a high-fat diet. Furthermore, we used high-throughput sequencing on a MiSeq Illumina platform to test the species of intestinal bacteria in high-fat-diet-induced obese rats. RESULTS: We found that cordycepin modifies the relative abundance of intestinal bacteria in high-fat-diet-induced obese rats. However, cordycepin did not alter the variety of bacteria in the intestine. Cordycepin treatment dramatically reversed the relative abundance of two dominant bacterial phyla (Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes) in the high-fat-diet-induced obese rats, resulting in abundance similar to that of the chow diet group. CONCLUSION: Our study suggests that cordycepin can reduce body weight and microbiome done by cordycepin seems be a result among its mechanisms of obesity reduction.

Study and application of herbal disinfectants in China.

Disinfection means killing or removing pathogenic microorganisms in media to realize a harmless process. A disinfectant, which is also referred to as a disinfection medicine in relevant regulations, is the medicine used to kill microorganisms for the purpose of disinfection. The disinfectants prepared from plants (including traditional Chinese herbal medicines) and the extracts thereof are called herbal disinfectants. China has a long history of using herbal disinfectants. As early as in 533 A.D., the use of Cornel to sterilize well water was recorded in Necessary Techniques for Qi People by Jia Enxie of the Beiwei Dynasty. During the Dragon Boat Festival, people often use fumigants made of traditional Chinese herbal medicines like Chinese Atractylodes, Argy Wormwood Leaf and Red Arsenic Sulfide to smoke their houses, so as to ward off plagues and drive away evils. In fact this is now a kind of disinfection practice.