Objective To establish an objective method for evaluating the intrinsic characteristics between hot and cold properties of herbal drugs and to study the hot property of Aconiti Lateralis Radix Praeparata(ALRP) and its compatibility with Zingiberis Rhizoma(ZR) on animal temperature tropism.Methods The equipment with cold/hot pads was used to investigate the variety of temperature tropism among mice treated by ALRP and its compatibility with ZR.Meanwhile,the activities of adenosine triphosphatase(ATPase),total anti-oxidant capability(T-AOC),and total superoxide dismutase(T-SOD) were measured.Results Compared with the homologous ALRP group,the compatibility between ALRP and ZR(AZ) had a stronger action against the decreasing of remaining rate on hot pad(P < 0.05),suggesting an enhancement of cold tropism.Meanwhile,the internal indexes of Na+-K+-ATPase activity,Ca2+-Mg2+-ATPase activity,and oxygen consuming volume increased significantly(P < 0.05),suggesting an enhancement of energy metabolism.The changes of T-AOC and T-SOD activity suggested that AZ reinforced the anti-oxidative capability of mice.In addition,it could be inferred from cluster analysis that the activity of AZ was concretely stronger than that of homologous ALRP.Conclusion ALRP and ZR are both herbs with hot property,but AZ has an enhanced trend of hot property.This external behavior of cold tropism and the internal activity of energy metabolism and anti-oxidant might reflect the internal hot property in an intuitive and objective way.The changes of ATPase activity of liver tissue might be the mechanism of drug action.
