Abstract
Red sage (Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge) is a perennial herb of the family Lamiaceae. From the roots were isolated more than 90 various compounds subjected to biological testing.
The lipophilic substances contained in the red sage mainly include diterpenic quinone compounds of the abietan type; the hydrophilic ones include polyphenols and phenolic acids. Their pharmacological effects are very varied: cardioprotective, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, lipid-lowering, neuroprotective and hepatoprotective.
In many cases, the pharmacological activity of the sage was associated with specific chemical substances that are responsible for biological activity. Modern plant research confirms that the effects attributed to the red sage in traditional medicine are based on pharmacologically active substances which might be a model for the synthesis of similar substances with the expected pharmacological effect and promising application in biomedicine.
This concerns especially the tanshinones, quinoid diterpenes that are recently intensively studied.