Medical School, Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang 471003, China.
Medical School, Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang 471003, China.
Biomed Pharmacother. 2016 Aug;82:304-11. doi: 10.1016/j.biopha.2016.05.001. Epub 2016 May 19.
The earthworm is a widely used Chinese herbal medicine. There are more than 40 prescriptions including earthworms in the "Compendium of Materia Medica". TCM theory holds that earthworms exert antispasmodic and antipyretic effects through the liver meridian to calm the liver. However, the clinical effect of earthworms on liver injury has not been clearly demonstrated. We have previously established a method to extract the active ingredients from earthworms (hereinafter referred to as EWAs) [1]. In the present study, we observed protective effect of the EWAs on tunicamycin-induced ERS (endoplasmic reticulum stress) model in human hepatic L02 cells. The results showed that the EWAs promote proliferation and reduced apoptosis of ERS model in L02 cells (P<0.01). The up-regulation of ERS-related proteins, including PERK (protein kinase RNA-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase), eIF2a (eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2a), ATF4 (activating transcription factor 4) and CHOP (CCAAT/enhancer binding protein homologous protein), in L02 cell under ERS was inhibited by treatment of the EWAs (P<0.01). In summary, our data suggest the EWAs can significant attenuate ERS-induced hepatocyte injury via PERK-eIF2a-ATF4 pathway.
地龙是一种广泛应用的中草药。《本草纲目》中有 40 多个包含地龙的处方。中医理论认为，地龙通过肝经发挥抗痉挛和解热作用，从而平肝。然而，地龙治疗肝损伤的临床疗效尚未得到明确证实。我们之前已经建立了一种从地龙中提取有效成分的方法（以下简称 EWAs）[1]。在本研究中，我们观察了 EWAs 对人肝 L02 细胞中衣霉素诱导的 ERS（内质网应激）模型的保护作用。结果表明，EWAs 促进了 L02 细胞中 ERS 模型的增殖，减少了细胞凋亡（P<0.01）。在 ERS 下，L02 细胞中 ERS 相关蛋白 PERK（蛋白激酶 RNA 样内质网激酶）、eIF2a（真核翻译起始因子 2a）、ATF4（激活转录因子 4）和 CHOP（CCAAT/增强子结合蛋白同源蛋白）的上调被 EWAs 处理所抑制（P<0.01）。综上所述，我们的数据表明，EWAs 可以通过 PERK-eIF2a-ATF4 通路显著减轻 ERS 诱导的肝细胞损伤。
