ABSTRACT
This study was aimed to observe the effect of Softening Liver and Reducing Enzyme Mixed Agent (SLREXA) in the prevention of acute liver injury rats induced by carbon tetrachloride (CCl4). A total of 60 male SD rats were randomly divided into 6 groups, which were the SLREXA low-, middle-, high-dose group, glucurolactone group, normal group and model group. Intraperitoneal injection of CCl4 was used to induce acute liver injury rat mod-el. Intragastric administration of SLREXA was given to each Chinese medicine group. Intragastric administration of distilled water was given to the normal group and the model group. Intragastric administration of glucurolactone aque-ous solution was given to the glucurolactone group. On the 12th day of the experiment, after 16-hour fasting, rats were killed. Pathological changes in liver tissues were examined. Blood serum was determined for alanine aminotrans-ferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST). The liver homogenate was determined for superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), glutathione (GSH), catalase (CAT) and malondialdehyde (MDA) in liver tis-sues of rats. RT-PCR was used to detect the expression level of mRNA in liver heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1). The re-sults showed that in the microscopic examination of liver tissues, compared with the model group, different doses of SLREXA can alleviate pathological damages of liver in varying degrees. Levels of blood serum ALT and AST content in different doses of SLREXA groups and glucurolactone group were significantly lower than those of the model group (P < 0.05 or P < 0.01). Compared with the model group, contents of GSH-Px, GSH, SOD, CAT in the liver ho-mogenate were significantly increased, and MDA content was decreased significantly (P< 0.05 or P< 0.01) in differ-ent doses of SLREXA groups and glucurolactone group; compared with the model group, the HO-1 mRNA relative expression quantity in the normal group and each treatment group increased obviously, with statistical significance (P< 0.05 or P< 0.01). It was concluded that SLREXA can prevent CCl4-induced liver injury rats with definite thera-peutic effect.