Department of Cardiology, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China.
Department of Anesthesiology, Puai Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China.
Biomed Res Int. 2018 Jun 13;2018:5392375. doi: 10.1155/2018/5392375. eCollection 2018.
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are considered to be the predominant cause of death in the world. Chinese herb medicines (CHMs) have been widely used for the treatment of CVDs in Asian countries for thousands of years. One reason of high efficacy of CHMs in treating CVDs is attributed to their inhibition in atherosclerosis (AS) development, a critical contributor to CVDs occurrence. Cumulative studies have demonstrated that CHMs alleviate atherogenesis via mediating pathophysiologic events involved in AS. However, there is deficiency in the summaries regarding antiatherogenic signal pathways regulated by CHMs. In this review, we focus on the signal cascades by which herb medicines and relevant extractives, derivatives, and patents improve proatherogenic processes including endothelium dysfunction, lipid accumulation, and inflammation. We mainly elaborate the CHMs-mediated signaling pathways in endothelial cells, macrophages, and vascular smooth muscle cells of each pathogenic event. Moreover, we briefly describe the other AS-related factors such as thrombosis, autophagy, immune response, and noncoding RNAs and effects of CHMs on them in the way of cascade regulation, which is helpful to further illustrate the molecular mechanisms of AS initiation and progression and discover newly effective agents for AS management.
心血管疾病（CVDs）被认为是世界上主要的死亡原因。几千年来，中药（CHMs）一直被广泛用于亚洲国家 CVDs 的治疗。CHMs 在治疗 CVDs 方面具有高疗效的一个原因是其对动脉粥样硬化（AS）发展的抑制作用，AS 是 CVDs 发生的一个关键因素。累积研究表明，CHMs 通过调节 AS 相关的病理生理事件来减轻动脉粥样硬化的发生。然而，关于 CHMs 调节的抗动脉粥样硬化信号通路的综述还存在不足。在这篇综述中，我们重点介绍了草药和相关提取物、衍生物和专利通过改善包括内皮功能障碍、脂质积累和炎症在内的促动脉粥样硬化过程来改善动脉粥样硬化的信号级联。我们主要阐述了 CHMs 在每个发病事件中对内皮细胞、巨噬细胞和血管平滑肌细胞的信号通路的调节。此外，我们还简要描述了 CHMs 对血栓形成、自噬、免疫反应和非编码 RNA 等其他与 AS 相关的因素的影响，以及它们在级联调节中的作用，这有助于进一步阐明 AS 起始和进展的分子机制，并发现新的有效的 AS 管理药物。
