ABSTRACT
Aim To investigate metabolomic profiles of acute myocardial ischemia (AMI) in rat plasma and explore the intervention effects and its mechanism of leonurine using a metabolomics approach based on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).Methods The plasma metabolomic characteristics in rats of sham group,AMI model group,and leonurine-treated group were detected by 1H NMR,and the different metabolites between AMI group and sham group or leonurine-treated group were analyzed by pattern recognition and multivariate data analysis.Results Orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) demonstrated that six metabolites related to AMI were screened out,including alanine,lysine,glycine,creatine,N-acetyl glycoprotein,and O-acetyl glycoprotein and all their levels were elevated in AMI group compared to sham group.Treatment of leonurine decreased the levels of alanine,lysine,and glycine,and increased the levels of choline,phosphocholine,and scyllo-inositol compared with the model group.Conclusions Leonurine can improve amino acid metabolism disorder under AMI conditions and enhance the function of choline and inositol pathway,which may explain its cardioprotective effect.The developed metabolomics approach in this study is a powerful tool for the investigation of the cardioprotective effect of leonurine and provide a new insight to understand its pharmacological mechanism.
ABSTRACT
Vitexin, a natural flavonoid compound, has extensive pharmacological activity. In recent years, many studies have re-vealed that vitexin has significant protective effects on central nervous system and peripheral nervous system, including anti-memory impairment, anti-epilepsy, anti-ischemic hypoxic brain damage, anti-depression, analgesia, etc. Vitexin exerts neuro-protective effects through the mechanisms of multiple pathways and multi-targets, such as reducing free radical level, inhibiting neuronal apoptosis, modulating inflammatory factors and related pathways, and regulating neurotransmitters and related recep-tors. This review mainly discusses the neuroprotective effects of vitexin and its underlying mechanisms.
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Drug addiction is a chronic,relapsing brain disorder,which develops,in part,because of aberrant learning and memory. Accumulative studies during recent decades demonstrated that addictive drug hijacks the normal memory circuit in the brain to form a long-lasting drug reward memory,which determines relapse to addictive drug. In this review,we will describe what has been learned about drug reward memory,especially focused on one of the associative drug reward memory models,drug-induced conditioned place preference. Drug reward memory is a dynamic process,which consists of several stages,including acquisition,consolidation,maintenance,retrieval,reconsolidation and extinction. Interventions with pharmacological in these memory processes will differentially regulate drug reward memory. Furthermore , the recently developed novel pure behavioral procedure according to the hypothesis of memory processes,e.g. post-retrieval extinction,could erase drug reward memory,which shows more advantages than the pharmacological medications that used in memory studies. Finally, we discussed two major methodological issues in drug reward memory,procedure and timing,which should be carefully considered when designing the related studies and interpreting the results from related studies. So far,it is not sure whether it is feasible to develop a pharmacological medication that only erases drug reward memory without impairing normal memories,we propose that inhibition of drug reward memory would be a good strategy to limit the risk of relapse to addictive drug. Although current findings on drug reward memory benefits little for treatment of drug addiction,the ongoing studies on drug reward memory will provide a promising strategy for reducing the risk of relapse to addictive drug.
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This review summarized some hot research fields in pharmacological effects of sinomenine such as anti-inflammatory, immunosuppressive, and anti-tumor effects. In addition to our exploration of its antinociceptive effect, we summarized above-mentioned pharmacological effects of sinomenine and its underly-ing mechanism, in order to provide an evidence for its clinical use.
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It is traditionally thought that interleukins are produced by immunocytes. However, abundant evidence indicates that neuron and neuroglia also produce and excrete interleukins. Brain derived interleukins have reciprocal action with multiple neurotransmitters, and influence animal's behavior, learning and memory. Moreover, brain derived interleukins are involved in Alzheimers disease, depression and so on. Further investigation on brain derived interleukins may improve in understanding the pathophysiology of some related diseases.