Cognitive, Emotional, Physical and Psychosocial Effects of Panax Quinquefolius L

Panax ginseng has been used in Asia for thousands of years to improve vitality, wakefulness, respiration, angina, nausea, attention, memory, and diminished libido. More recently, Panax extracts have become one of the most popular commercial herbal dietary supplements in the West as well. Unfortunately, a limited understanding of the bioactive ingredients within the Panax extracts resulted in a wide spectrum of available products with no guidelines for standardization. The lack of standardization undermined any legitimate attempt to validate the claimed health benefits of the extracts. However, recent advances in the identification, quantification, and standardization of extract components with demonstrated systemic and neurological actions in animals have created a novel opportunity for the controlled clinical investigation of some Panax extracts.

A significant improvement in the standardization of Panax extracts occurred approximately 20 years ago with the introduction of a 4% minimum ginsenoside content in a formulation of Panax ginseng C V Meyer under the trademark G115 by Pharmaton in Lugano Switzerland. This prompted a series of investigations of short-term cognitive, physical, emotional, and psychosocial benefits from a single dose of G115. Idiosyncratic cognitive gains were reported, but no reliable benefits were observed in physical, emotional, or psychosocial status. Several studies have examined the cognitive, physical, emotional, and psychosocial benefits from sustained exposure to G115, but these studies are few in number and often failed to include standardized behavioural measures or controlled Panax extracts.

Over the past five years, refinements in high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) have allowed greater precision in Panax constituent analysis, with significant implications to the investigation of the safety and efficacy of Panax extracts in human populations. HPLC has been used to identify and quantify several promising neuroactive ginsenosides that are likely relevant to the human bioactive effect of Panax extracts. Most notable are the Rg1 and Rb1 ginsenosides from Panax quinquefolius L which show a number of interesting in vitro effects on animal tissue from the central nervous system that have led to several positive results from studies of animal learning. Most significant, however, was the introduction of HT1001, a precisely standardized proprietary combination of Rg1 and Rb1 ginsenosides developed by CV Technologies in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Each product lot of HT1001 from CV Technologies is tested to ensure consistency of the ginsenoside composition. The introduction of a commercial product with a precise standardized composition of Rb1 and Rg1 has created a unique opportunity for investigating the safety and efficacy of Panax extracts.