Abstract

Depression is a major mood disorder, characterized by depressed mood, feeling of worthlessness and disturbed appetite. Nelumbinis semen (NS), lotus seed, has been widely used in Korean traditional medicine as a remedy for insomnia, anxiety, and women's depression following post-menstrual-pause. We recently found NS to have an anti-depressant effect on chronic mild stress-induced depression-like symptom in the rat. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of NS extracs on depression-like symptom in the forced swimming test (FST) in the rat, which is widely used as a behavioral screening test for antidepressant activity of new compounds. We prepared five extracts using water, ethyl acetate, n-butyl alcohol, n-hexane and ethanol as solvents. When animals treated with each extract were executed on FST, n-butyl alcohol extract showed the strongest inhibitory effect on the immobility time. We further fractionated n-buthyl alcohol into five feactions with different mixture of water and methanol, and the 3：7 (water：methanol) fraction was the most effective on the immobility time on FST. In further study, unknown compounds in this fraction and neural mechanisms underlying their anti-depressant actions should be examined. (Korean J Str Res 2008;16:99∼106)

• Keywords: Nelumbinis Semen (NS), Antidepressants, Forced swimming test (FST)