Abstract:To study the impact of the extract from Chinese water chestnuts on the alcohol dehydrogenase（ADH） activity. With the active target of ADH， the improved Valle & Hoch method was used to detect the influence of various extract from water chestnuts on ADH activity in vitro. Male mice were randomly divided into five groups， which was used to study the influence of extract from water chestnuts on alcohol concentration and ADH activity in blood and liver of mice after oral administration of alcohol. And the alcohol concentrations in mice were deter－ mined by the method of GC-FID. Compared with normal saline， water extract of Chinese water chestnuts have significantly increased the ADH activity. And the value of ADH activity was 45.2 % at the concentration of 0.5 g/mL. However， the ethanol extracts of water chestnuts could obviously inhibit the ADH activity. After oral administration of aqueous extract from Chinese Water Chestnut， the ADH active in mice blood rose to the peak value in the period of 0.5 h-1.5 h in the model group. At the same time， the ADH activity in mice liver rose to peak value during 0.5 h-2.5 h. Although the changing trend of ADH activity in model group was similar with the trend in extract group， the ADH activity in model group were lower than in extract group. Besides， the alcohol concentration in blood rose to the maximum value during 0.5 h-12 h in the model group， which was similar about the changing trend in the two group. By the usage of pharmacokinetics formula， the elimination half-life was 7.41，5.63， 3.02 and 2.56 h in the model group and different extract groups， respectively. The results showed that the aqueous extract of Chinese water chestnut could reduce the alcohol concentration by activating ADH in vitro. Fur－ thermore， the persistent activation of ADH was exhibited by the aqueous extract.