title: Morphological and microscopic characterization of five commonly-used testacean traditional Chinese medicines.
abstract: Testacean traditional Chinese medicine (TTCM), derived from the outer shell of sea or freshwater mollusks, is a special and important category of Chinese medicinal materials. To ensure the effective use of TTCM, a comparative identification study was performed on five commonly-used testacean drugs, including Haliotidis Concha, Arcae Concha, Meretricis Concha, Ostreae Concha and Margaritifera Concha (Shijueming, Walengzi, Geqiao, Muli and Zhenzhumu in Chinese, respectively). Typical morphological photographs of the crude drugs were acquired, and the key microscopic characteristics of the derived powders under normal light microscope and polarized light microscope were summarized. The major results can be concluded as follows: (1) the original species involved in the five TTCMs could be distinguished by their respective interspecies morphological characteristics; (2) the key identification characteristics of the five powdered crude drugs were mainly crystal fragments, with the fragment features under both normal light and polarized light microscope providing powerful points for differentiating the five commonly-used testacean drugs. This study demonstrated that it is feasible to provide authentication for these five kinds of TTCMs by the combination of morphology with microscopy.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Natural Medicines, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing 210009, China.
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Natural Medicines, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing 210009, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Natural Medicines, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing 210009, China.
authors.forename: Ping
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Natural Medicines, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing 210009, China.
authors.forename: Ping
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Natural Medicines, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing 210009, China.
authors.forename: Huijun
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
keywords: Microscopic characteristics; Morphological characteristics; Normal light microscopy; Polarized light microscopy; Testacean traditional  Chinese medicine