Xue Jiaqian, Zhou Qingwei
Respiratory Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Henan University of Chinese Medicine, Zhengzhou, 450000, People's Republic of China.
J Inflamm Res. 2025 Jul 23;18:9795-9809. doi: 10.2147/JIR.S532395. eCollection 2025.
The impact of COPD on human health is enormous. Emodin, which has anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, spasmolysis, and laxative effects, has not been systematically investigated within a study with regard to the treatment of COPD.
In this study, we conducted Experiment 1 to evaluate the effects of emodin on COPD. Emodin was purchased from Shanghai Yuanye Biotechnology Co. Ltd. (batch number: T17A10F95418). Pathological changes in lung tissue and the average lung lining interval were used to evaluate the severity of emphysema. Inflammatory cell counts in alveolar lavage fluid and the ratio of neutrophils and lymphocytes were used to observe the level of inflammation. The level of HMGB1-RAGE expression was determined via PCR. Moreover, we compared changes in the metabolites of the intestinal microbial community following an intervention with emodin. In Experiment 2, we observed the effect of fecal on the inflammatory response in COPD mice. A mouse dual intervention model was established using flora depletion and COPD modeling. We evaluated the general health of the model mice, specific pathological changes in lung tissue, the average lung lining interval, inflammatory cell counts within the alveolar lavage fluid, and HMGB1-RAGE pathway expression.
Our results demonstrated that emodin statistically significantly improved lung tissue inflammation in COPD mice, and that butanoic acid was the main differential metabolite in intestinal bacteria. Transplanting the feces of the emodin group mice in Experiment 1 to the model mice evaluated in Experiment 2 reduced the infiltration of inflammatory cells and down-regulated the HMGB1-RAGE inflammation pathway.
Our findings provide important information for guiding future research directions.
慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD）对人类健康的影响巨大。大黄素具有抗炎、抗癌、解痉和通便作用，但尚未在一项关于COPD治疗的研究中进行系统研究。
在本研究中，我们进行了实验1以评估大黄素对COPD的影响。大黄素购自上海源叶生物科技有限公司（批号：T17A10F95418）。用肺组织的病理变化和平均肺内衬间隔来评估肺气肿的严重程度。用肺泡灌洗液中的炎症细胞计数以及中性粒细胞与淋巴细胞的比例来观察炎症水平。通过聚合酶链反应（PCR）测定高迁移率族蛋白B1（HMGB1）-晚期糖基化终末产物受体（RAGE）的表达水平。此外，我们比较了大黄素干预后肠道微生物群落代谢物的变化。在实验2中，我们观察了粪便对COPD小鼠炎症反应的影响。使用菌群耗竭和COPD建模建立小鼠双重干预模型。我们评估了模型小鼠的一般健康状况、肺组织的特定病理变化、平均肺内衬间隔、肺泡灌洗液中的炎症细胞计数以及HMGB1-RAGE途径的表达。
我们的结果表明，大黄素在统计学上显著改善了COPD小鼠的肺组织炎症，并且丁酸是肠道细菌中的主要差异代谢物。将实验1中大黄素组小鼠的粪便移植到实验2中评估的模型小鼠体内，可减少炎症细胞浸润并下调HMGB1-RAGE炎症途径。
我们的研究结果为指导未来的研究方向提供了重要信息。
