Tongxinluo has been widely used in China for the treatment of acute stroke and for neuroprotection. Research group at Encephalopathy Center, Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, China intragastrically administered Tongxinluo superfine powder suspension or its vehicle to rats for 5 successive days before middle cerebral artery occlusion. There are many advantages of using small animal PET for drug research. First, the results of the study in vitro cannot be directly applied to human studies, while small animal PET imaging methods and results can be extrapolated to humans, thus bridging animal and human studies. Moreover, with PET imaging, experimental procedures can be repeated in the same animals without damage, thus reducing the use of laboratory animals, improving ethical acceptability and saving experimental costs. The biggest scientific advantage of small animal PET is its use in studying the same animals at different time points, which can eliminate interindividual differences. 18F-FDG small animal PET imaging is a useful tool with which to study the molecular pharmacology of traditional Chinese medicine. The relevant study has been published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 9, No. 13, 2014).
Article: "Neuroprotective effect of the traditional Chinese herbal formula Tongxinluo: a PET imaging study in rats" by Xiao Cheng1, Haoxuan Luo2, Lihua Zhou2, Lixin Wang1, Jingbo Sun1, Yan Huang1, Enli Luo1, Yefeng Cai1 (1 Encephalopathy Center, Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China; 2 Department of Anatomy, Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China)
Cheng X, Luo HX, Zhou LH, Wang LX, Sun JB, Huang Y, Luo EL, Cai YF. Neuroprotective effect of the traditional Chinese herbal formula Tongxinluo: a PET imaging study in rats. Neural Regen Res. 2014;9(13):1267-1274. http://www.nrronline.org/
Journal
Neural Regeneration Research