THE ROLE OF CRUDE POLYSACCHARIDE FRACTIONS ON THE MITOGENIC ACTIVITY BY SHOSAIKOTO

Shosaikoto, which is one of the Japanese and Chinese traditional herba l medicine mixtures, has several immunomodulating activities. Especial ly, Shosaikoto is a potent polyclonal B cell mitogen in vivo and in vi tro. In order to characterize the active substances for mitogenic acti vity, Shosaikoto was fractionated by means of ethanol precipitation to give two fractions, called ethanol-precipitate (EP) fraction and etha nol-soluble (ES) fraction. The EP fraction consisted mainly of polysac charides and showed significant mitogenic activity. The ES fraction co nsisted of low molecular compounds and did not show the activity in vi tro. The EP fraction of hot water extracts of Glycyrrhizae Radix and B upureuri Radix showed the activities, and the ES fraction of a hot wat er extract of Glycyrrhizae Radix and all fractions of hot water extrac t of Scutellariae Radix showed the cytotoxicity. These results suggest ed that the crude poly saccharide fractions could play an important ro le in the mitogenic activity by Shosaikoto.