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BACKGROUND:Pulmonary hypertension stil lacks effective treatment measures. The effects of alprostadil in the treatment of pulmonary hypertension remain controversial. OBJECTIVE:To observe the effect of alprostadil in the treatment of pulmonary hypertension induced by chronic hypoxia. METHODS:24 experimental rats were randomly and evenly divided into control group, model group, and treatment group. The rats of model and treatment groups were fed in the hypoxic box to establish the animal model of pulmonary hypertension, and the rats of control group were fed in the normal air. After pulmonary hypertension induction, rats from the treatment group were intraperitonealy administered alprostadil injection (5 μg/kg per day) for 4 consecutive weeks. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Compared with the model group, the mean pulmonary artery pressure, right ventricular systolic pressure, pulmonary vascular thickness, size of blood vessels and alveolar wal thickness of rats in the treatment group were obviously decreased. The results suggest that alprostadil can decrease pulmonary artery pressure and prevent lung injury.
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BACKGROUND:Nerve growth factor (NGF) belongs to a biological macromolecule that is difficult to pass through the blood-brain barrier. However, a retroviral vector carrying exogenous gene can be stably inserted and integrated into the host cellgenome, which is suitable for gene therapy. OBJECTIVE:To study the gene expression of recombinant retroviral vector carrying rat NGF gene in neural stem cels. METHODS: The rat NGF gene was inserted into a retroviral vector pLEGFP-N1, which was transferred into packaging cels PT67 by Lipofectamine 2000. The positive clones in virus supernatant were colected by G418 selection and used to infect neural stem cels. After that, the NGF expression was tested by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay and the biological competence by PC12 cels, and then morphological change of neural stem cels and celltyping were examined by fluorescent microscope. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:The neural stem cels could express extrinsic source NGF protein after the recombinant plasmid was infected into neural stem cels. The PC12 cels increased in the experimental group and stretched out long neurites. And the NGF protein could maintain the neural stem cellsurvival and stimulate their differentiation. These findings suggest that the neural stem cels carrying extrinsic source NGF gene could express NGF successfuly, and the NGF protein induced the survival and differentiation of neural stem cels.
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Objective To investigate the efficacy of sophocarpine in rats with alcoholic liver disease and its effects on the expression of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α,interleukin (IL)-6 and transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1.Methods A total of 48 male Sprague-Dawley adult rats were evenly divided into healthy control group,model group,prevention group and treatment group.The rats in the healthy control group were gavaged with 0.9％NaCl every day for 12 weeks.The rats in the model group,prevention group and treatment group were gavaged with alcohol for 12 weeks to establish the model.The prevention group was injected with 20 mg · kg1 · d1 sophocarpine for 12 weeks.Since the fifth week,the treatment group was continuously injected with 20 mg · kg1 · d-1 sophocarpine for eight weeks.The histological changes were evaluated.The serum levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase ( AST ), alkaline phosphatase (AKP),triglyceride (TG) and total cholesterol (TC) were examined.And the expression of TNF-α,IL-6 and TGF-β1 in liver tissue at mRNA and protein level were detected with immunohistochemistry and real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay.Comparison among groups was perform with single factor analysis of variance,pairwise comparisons with least significant difference method (LSD method),ranked data with Kruskal-Wallis H-test and multiple pairwise comparison with Nemenyi test.Results Compared with model group,hepatic steatosis and inflammatory cell infiltration were significantly improved in the treatment group and prevention group.The levels of ALT (41.40 U/L± 10.53 U/L and 40.75 U/L±6.94 U/L vs 58.37 U/I±5.35 U/L),AST(121.60 U/L±16.24 U/L and 109.50 U/L±9.23 U/L vs 156.63 U/L±32.47 U/L),AKP(114.88 U/L±40.37 U/L and 112.60 U/L±44.34 U/L vs 161.75 U/L±28.95 U/L),TG (4.19 mmol/L±0.99 mmol/L and 2.69 mmol/L± 1.35 mmol/L vs 4.50 mmol/L±0.99 mmol/L) and TC (1.48 mmol/L±0.28 mmol/L and 1.43 mmol/L±0.19 mmol/L vs 1.67 mmol/L±0.20 mmol/L) significantly decreased and the difference was statistically significant ( all P＜0.05).The expression of TNF-α,IL-6 and TGF-β1 at mRNA and protein level in liver tissue of model group were significantly higher than those of healthy control group,prevention group and treatment group.After treated with sophocarpine,the expression of TNF-α(mRNA:1.36 ± 0.08,1.16 ± 0.05 ; protein:3.38 ％ ± 0.82 ％,1.74 ％ ± 0.65 ％ ),IL-6 (mRNA:1.51 ± 0.05,1.39 ± 0.02; protein:5.89％ ± 0.96％,4.26％ ± 0.53％) and TGF-β1 (mRNA:1.39±0.04,1.37±0.02; protein:4.27％ ±0.97％,2.11％ ±0.83％) of treatment group and prevention group at mRNA and protein level significantly lower than those of model group (mRNA:1.81±0.16,1.95 ±0.13,1.84±0.22; protein:5.82％ ± 1.21％,7.63％ ±1.03％,5.33％± 1.12％) and the difference was statistically significant (all P＜0.01).Conclusion Sophocarpine significantly alleviates alcohol induced liver injury in rats,improves liver steatosis and inflammatory reaction degree,which may be related with the downregulation of TNF-α,TGF-β1 and IL-6 expression in liver tissue of ALD rats.