ABSTRACT
<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To study the effects of yiqi huoxue recipe and Coxsackie B virus type 3 (CVB3) on the expression of ribosomal protein S20 in rat cardiac myocytes, to explore the pathogenesis of myocarditis induced by CVB3 and the mechanism of yiqi huoxue recipe on gene level, and to further investigate whether yiqi huoxue recipe is an effective prescription for CVB3 myocarditis.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>A modified suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) was used to isolate differentially expressed genes between the CVB3 infection group and the treatment group with yiqi huoxue recipe. The results were further verified by fluorescence RT-PCR.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The results of SSH showed that the gene expression of ribosomal protein S20 in the treatment group was higher than that in the CVB3 infection group (P<0.05), which agreed with the results of fluorescent RT-PCR.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Down-regulation of ribosomal protein S20 mRNA expression might be one of the mechanisms in CVB3 myocarditis, and yiqi huoxue recipe could achieve the treatment of viral myocarditis by regulating the expression of ribosomal protein S20.</p>