Pharmacopoeia

Source:
This product is the dried mature seeds of Cassia obtusifolia L. or Cassia tora L., a legume. The mature fruits are harvested in the fall, dried in the sun, and the seeds are beaten down and impurities removed.

Traits:
Cassia: slightly rhombic-square or short cylindrical, both ends parallel inclined, 3-7mm long, 2-4mm wide. green-brown or dark brown surface, smooth and shiny. One end is relatively flat, the other end is obliquely pointed, the dorsal and ventral surfaces each have 1 protruding prongs, each side of the prongs have 1 oblique symmetrical and lighter color linear concave lines. Texture hard, not easily broken. Seed coat thin, cotyledons 2, yellow, “S” shape folding and overlapping. Slightly bitter flavor.

Cassia: short cylindrical, small, 3-5mm long, 2-3mm wide, with a wide light yellow-brown band on each side of the surface ridge.

Taste and Meridian
Sweet, bitter, salty, slightly cold. Attributed to the liver and large intestine meridians

Functions and Indications:
Clearing heat and brightening the eyes, moistening the intestines and laxatives. It is used for eye redness and astringency, shyness and excessive tears, headache and dizziness, darkness and uncertainty of the eyes, constipation.

Modern Pharmacological Actions

1. Hypolipidemic effect
The effective part of cassia seeds in lowering blood lipids is n-butanol part. Compared with the hyperlipidemic rat model group, total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels in serum of cassia seed dose group were significantly increased.

In the liver, the levels of TC and TG were significantly reduced, and the total superoxide dismutase (T-SOD) was significantly elevated, indicating that cassia seeds have certain hypolipidemic function.

2. Hypotensive effect
Studies have shown that cassia seed anthraquinone glycoside can significantly reduce the two kidneys and a clip hypertensive rats tail artery systolic blood pressure, and has a protective effect on the kidneys of hypertensive rats. Cassia seed protein, oligosaccharides and anthraquinone glycosides can significantly reduce the blood pressure of experimental hypertensive rats.

3.Laxative effect
Traditional applications have shown that cassia seeds have laxative and laxative effects, and the active ingredient may be the anthraquinones they contain.

Anthraquinones have the effect of promoting peristalsis of the intestinal wall, reducing the absorption of steroids and thus enhancing intestinal diarrhea, and the rich polysaccharides and cellulose in cassia seeds have obvious synergistic effects with anthraquinones.
2.4 Eye-opening effect
Cassia seed is named because of its prominent eye-opening effect. The n-hexane part of cassia seed has significant anti-photo-oxidation effect, which can inhibit the deposition of a kind of light-induced formation of pyridine retinol (A2E) in the retinal pigment epithelial cells, and it is expected to improve the macular degeneration of the eyes of the elderly.

2.5 Hepatoprotective effect
The ethanol extract of Cassia seed has antioxidant effects, can inhibit the CCl4-induced decrease in cytochrome P4502E1 activity, reduce hepatic and mitochondrial malondialdehyde levels, increase hepatic and mitochondrial glutathione levels, and restore the activities of superoxide dismutase, glutathione reductase and glutathione S-transferase, which has hepatoprotective effects.

Modern Applications

Through the query of Pharmaceutical Intelligence data, there are 464 domestic health food products, 26 imported health food products, and 74 enterprise standards related to cassia seeds.

According to the results of cassia seed domestic health food efficacy query, weight loss effect 153 articles, auxiliary lowering of blood lipids, regulating blood lipids 133 articles, laxative 118 articles, relieve visual fatigue 28 articles, auxiliary lowering of blood pressure, regulating blood pressure 24 articles, and chemical liver injury has auxiliary protective function 15 articles.

In recent years, due to the domestic food purchase price increase and other factors lead to domestic cassia seed production, but part of our cassia seed from foreign imports, so there has not yet been a gap between supply and demand.
But in fact, the domestic cassia seed quality is more excellent, and its production is difficult to meet market demand.

Cassia seeds are medicinal and food items, its distribution is widespread, abundant and easy to obtain, processing and concocting method is simple, has a long history of application in folklore, with heat and clear eyesight, laxative function, and thus part of the current research on the cassia seeds with the status of research is summarized (see Table 1).