Traditionally, the carnitine pool is closely related to fatty acid metabolism. However, with increasing research, the pleiotropic effects of the carnitine pool have gradually emerged. The purpose of this review is to comprehensively investigate of the emerging understanding of the pleiotropic role of the carnitine pool, carnitine/acylcarnitines are not only auxiliaries or metabolites of fatty acid oxidation, but also play more complex and diverse roles, including energy metabolism, mitochondrial homeostasis, epigenetic regulation, regulation of inflammation and the immune system, tumor biology, signal transduction, and neuroprotection. This review provides an overview of the complex network of carnitine synthesis, transport, shuttle, and regulation, carnitine/acylcarnitines have the potential to be used as communication molecules, biomarkers and therapeutic targets for multiple diseases, with profound effects on intercellular communication, metabolic interactions between organs and overall metabolic health. The purpose of this review is to comprehensively summarize the multidimensional biological effects of the carnitine pool beyond its traditional role in fatty acid oxidation and to summarize the systemic effects mediated by carnitine/acylcarnitine to provide new perspectives for pharmacological research and treatment innovation and new strategies for the prevention and treatment of a variety of diseases.

The extraction of natural products with available green and safe solvents is rather limited. Recently, deep eutectic solvents (DESs) have attracted growing interest as sustainable and safe solvents. However, few studies have applied DESs in the extraction and determination of phenolic acids. Therefore, in the present study, DESs (alcohol-based) were applied to extract rosmarinic acid and salviaflaside, which were the predominant phenolic acids in Prunella vulgaris. The extraction yield acted as the comprehensive evaluation index, and a central composite design (CCD) of the response surface liquid/solid ratio methodology (RSM) was employed to further optimize the alcohol-based DES extraction conditions. The results showed that the optimized extraction conditions included a water/DES ratio of 36% (v/v), liquid/solid ratio of 14 mL g⁻¹, extraction temperature of 86 °C and extraction time of 46 min for rosmarinic acid as well as a water/DES ratio of 30% (v/v), liquid/solid ratio of 12 mL g⁻¹, extraction temperature of 89 °C and extraction time of 32 min for salviaflaside in ChCl/ethylene glycol at 1/4 ratio. Under these conditions, the mean experimental value of the extraction yields (3.658 and 1.049 mg g⁻¹ for rosmarinic acid and salviaflaside) corresponded well with the predicted values. Moreover, these experimental values were higher and safer than those obtained from previously reported conventional extraction methods. This study suggests that DESs can be utilized as sustainable and safe extraction media for natural products.

Background. Total flavonoids content (TFC) is one of the most important quality indexes ofGinkgo bilobaleaf, and it is concerned with total antioxidant activity. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) method has showed its advantages in fast, accurate, qualitative, and quantitative analysis of various components in many quality control researches. In this study, a calibration model was built by partial least squares regression (PLSR) coupling with NIR spectrum to quantitatively analyze the TFC and total antioxidant activity ofGinkgo bilobaleaf.Results. During the model establishing, some spectrum pretreatment and outlier diagnosis methods were optimized to establish the final model. The coefficients of determination (R²) for TFC and total antioxidant activity prediction were 0.8863 and 0.8486, respectively; and the root mean square errors of prediction (RMSEP) were 2.203 mg/g and 0.2211 mM/g, respectively.Conclusion. These results showed that NIR method combined with chemometrics is suitable for quantitative analysis of main components and their activities and might be applied to quality control of relevant products.

Medicinal food varieties developed according to the theory of medical and edible homologues are effective at preventing and treating chronic diseases and in health care. As of 2022, 110 types of traditional Chinese medicines from the same source of medicine and food have been published by the National Health Commission. Inflammation is the immune system’s first response to injury, infection, and stress. Chronic inflammation is closely related to many diseases such as atherosclerosis and cancer. Therefore, timely intervention for inflammation is the mainstay treatment for other complex diseases. However, some traditional anti-inflammatory drugs on the market are commonly associated with a number of adverse effects, which seriously affect the health and safety of patients. Therefore, the in-depth development of new safe, harmless, and effective anti-inflammatory drugs has become a hot topic of research and an urgent clinical need. Polysaccharides, one of the main active ingredients of medical and edible homologous traditional Chinese medicines (MEHTCMs), have been confirmed by a large number of studies to exert anti-inflammatory effects through multiple targets and are considered potential natural anti-inflammatory drugs. In addition, the structure of medical and edible homologous traditional Chinese medicines’ polysaccharides (MEHTCMPs) may be the key factor determining their anti-inflammatory activity, which makes the underlying the anti-inflammatory effects of polysaccharides and their structure–efficacy relationship hot topics of domestic and international research. However, due to the limitations of the current analytical techniques and tools, the structures have not been fully elucidated and the structure–efficacy relationship is relatively ambiguous, which are some of the difficulties in the process of developing and utilizing MEHTCMPs as novel anti-inflammatory drugs in the future. For this reason, this paper summarizes the potential anti-inflammatory mechanisms of MEHTCMPs, such as the regulation of the Toll-like receptor-related signaling pathway, MAPK signaling pathway, JAK-STAT signaling pathway, NLRP3 signaling pathway, PI3K-AKT signaling pathway, PPAR-γ signaling pathway, Nrf2-HO-1 signaling pathway, and the regulation of intestinal flora, and it systematically analyzes and evaluates the relationships between the anti-inflammatory activity of MEHTCMPs and their structures.