Kim Jeehye, Woo Juyoun, Lyu Ji Hyo, Song Hyuk-Hwan, Jeong Han-Sol, Ha Ki-Tae, Choi Jun-Yong, Han Chang Woo, Ahn Kyung-Seop, Oh Sei-Ryang, Sadikot Ruxana T, Kim Kyun Ha, Joo Myungsoo
School of Korean Medicine, Pusan National University, Yangsan 626-870, Republic of Korea.
Natural Medicine Research Center, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Ochang, Chung-buk 33-883, Republic of Korea.
Phytomedicine. 2014 Mar 15;21(4):470-8. doi: 10.1016/j.phymed.2013.10.005. Epub 2013 Nov 17.
Carthami Flos (CF) is used in traditional Asian medicine to treat blood stagnation and its associated diseases in patients. While the underlying mechanism for this effect remains unknown, CF has been reported to activate Nrf2, a transcription factor that is critical in protecting from various inflammatory lung diseases including acute lung injury (ALI). Here, we examined whether CF has a therapeutic effect on lung inflammation and assessed the impact of Nrf2 on the effect of CF using an ALI mouse model. Treatment of bone marrow derived macrophages with standardized aqueous extract of CF (AECF) activated Nrf2, resulting in the expression of Nrf2 dependent genes including GCLC, NQO-1 and HO-1. While intranasal LPS treatment of wild type mice resulted in neutrophilic infiltration and a concomitant expression of pro-inflammatory cytokine genes in the lung, the hallmarks of ALI, an intratracheal spraying of AECF to the lung 2h after LPS treatment suppressed the inflammatory response. By contrast, similar treatment in nrf2(-/-) mice with AECF failed to attenuate the inflammatory response. Thus, our results show that AECF attenuated neutrophilic lung inflammation in mice, which required Nrf2. Since AECF administration abrogates lung inflammation after LPS treatment, we propose CF as a potential therapeutics in the management of ALI.
红花（CF）在传统亚洲医学中用于治疗患者的血液瘀滞及其相关疾病。虽然这种作用的潜在机制尚不清楚，但据报道CF可激活Nrf2，Nrf2是一种转录因子，在预防包括急性肺损伤（ALI）在内的各种炎症性肺病中起关键作用。在这里，我们研究了CF是否对肺部炎症具有治疗作用，并使用ALI小鼠模型评估了Nrf2对CF作用的影响。用标准化的CF水提取物（AECF）处理骨髓来源的巨噬细胞可激活Nrf2，导致包括GCLC、NQO-1和HO-1在内的Nrf2依赖性基因表达。虽然野生型小鼠经鼻内给予LPS会导致肺部中性粒细胞浸润和促炎细胞因子基因的伴随表达，这是ALI的特征，但在LPS处理后2小时向肺部气管内喷洒AECF可抑制炎症反应。相比之下，在nrf2（-/-）小鼠中用AECF进行类似处理未能减轻炎症反应。因此，我们的结果表明，AECF可减轻小鼠肺部的中性粒细胞炎症，这需要Nrf2。由于给予AECF可消除LPS处理后的肺部炎症，我们提出CF作为ALI治疗的潜在药物。
