The fruits of Ziziphus jujuba, known as jujube or Chinese date, are being consumed all around the world because of their health benefits, as both food and herbal medicine. Traditionally, one of the main functions of jujube, as described in herbal medicine, is to benefit our brain by calming down the mind and improving quality of sleep. Here, the activities of jujubes on nervous system are summarized and discussed. Jujube possesses neuroprotective activities, including protecting neuronal cells against neurotoxin stress, stimulating neuronal differentiation, increasing expression of neurotrophic factors, and promoting memory and learning. Flavonoid, cAMP, and jujuboside could be the potential bioactive ingredients to account for the aforesaid biological activities. These findings imply that jujube is a potential candidate for development of health supplements for prevention and/or treatment of neurological diseases.

The fruits of Ziziphus jujuba, commonly known as jujube, red date or Chinese date, are taken as fresh or dried food, and as traditional medicine worldwide due to high nutritional and health values. Traditionally in China, jujube is considered as a medicinal fruit that is being used in treating blood deficiency. In this review, the beneficial effects of jujubes on the hematopoietic functions are summarized and discussed. As illustrated in cell and animal models, the application of jujube extract possessed beneficial effects, including regulation of erythropoiesis via activation of hypoxia inducible factor-induced erythropoietin, potential capacity in recycling heme iron during erythrophagocytosis and bi-directional regulation of immune response. Thus, the blood-nourishing function of jujube is being proposed here. Flavonoid, polysaccharide and triterpenoid within jujube could serve as the potential active ingredients accounting for the aforementioned health benefits. Taken together, these findings provide several lines of evidence for further development of jujube as supplementary products for prevention and/or treatment of anemia.

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic relapsing disease without satisfactory treatments, in which intestinal inflammation and disrupted intestinal epithelial barrier are two main pathogeneses triggering UC. Berberrubine (BB) is deemed as one of the major active metabolite of berberine (BBR), a naturally-occurring isoquinoline alkaloid with appreciable anti-UC effect. This study aimed to comparatively investigate the therapeutic effects of BB and BBR on dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced mouse colitis model, and explore the potential underlying mechanism. Results revealed that BB (20 mg/kg) produced a comparable therapeutic effect as BBR (50 mg/kg) and positive control sulfasalazine (200 mg/kg) by significantly reducing the disease activity index (DAI) with prolonged colon length and increased bodyweight as compared with the DSS group. BB treatment was shown to significantly ameliorate the DSS-induced colonic pathological alternations and decreased histological scores. In addition, BB markedly attenuated colonic inflammation by alleviating inflammatory cell infiltration and inhibiting myeloperoxidase (MPO) and cytokines (TNF-α, IFN-γ, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-4 and IL-10) productions in DSS mice. Furthermore, BB treatment substantially upregulated the expression of tight junction (TJ) proteins (zonula occludens-1, zonula occludens-2, claudin-1, occludin) and mRNA expression of mucins (mucin-1 and mucin-2), and decreased the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio. In summary, BB exerted similar effect to its analogue BBR and positive control in attenuating DSS-induced UC with much lower dosage and similar mechanism. The protective effect observed may be intimately associated with maintaining the integrity of the intestinal mucosal barrier and mitigating intestinal inflammation, which were mediated at least partially, via favorable modulation of TJ proteins and mucins and inhibition of inflammatory mediators productions in the colonic tissue. This is the first report to demonstrate that BB possesses pronounced anti-UC effect similar to BBR and sulfasalazine with much smaller dosage. BB might have the potential to be further developed into a promising therapeutic option in the treatment of UC.