Kanazawa Sutra (KanS) is a medicinal thread that is used for the treatment of anal fistula. It is used as a substitute for Kshara Sutra (KS) which is used in Ayurvedic medicine. KanS is composed of Ficus carica latex (FCL), Capsicum annuum tincture (CAT), Achyranthes fauriei Kshara (which is processed ash from the whole plant) and powdered Curcuma longa rhizome (CLR). In this study, we evaluated the ingredients of KanS by measuring nitric oxide (NO) production in murine macrophage-like cell line J774.1 as well as examining cytotoxicity to rat skeletal muscle myoblasts (L6) and L6 differentiation, with a view to improving its pharmacological effect. We focused on Mallotus japonicus bark (MJB), which is described in the Japanese Pharmacopeia and belongs to the Euphorbiaceae family. Its biological activities were evaluated in a similar manner to the evaluation of KanS ingredients. We found that MJB extracts showed similar biological activity to Euphorbia neriifolia latex (ENL), an ingredient of KS. We conclude that the NO inhibitory activity of KanS is mainly due to CLR, and its cytotoxicity to L6 and inhibitory activity on L6 differentiation are mainly due to CLR and FCL. As CAT has no characteristic activity, the biological activity and the anal fistula treatment ability of KanS would be improved by substituting MJB for CAT.
Keywords: Euphorbia neriifolia; Kanazawa Sutra; Kshara Sutra; Mallotus japonicus.