No abstract

Environmental issues pose huge threats to public health, particularly the damage caused by fine particulate matter (PM2.5). However, the mechanisms of injury require further investigation and medical materials that can protect the lungs from PM2.5 are needed. We have found that Colla corii asini, a traditional Chinese medicine that has long been used to treat various ailments, is a good candidate to serve this purpose. To understand the mechanisms of PM2.5-induced lung toxicity and the protective effects of Colla corii asini, we established a rat model of lung injury via intratracheal instillation of artificial PM2.5 (aPM2.5). Our results demonstrated that Colla corii asini significantly protected against lung function decline and pathologic changes. Inflammation was ameliorated by suppression of Arg-1 to adjust the disturbed metabolic pathways induced by aPM2.5, such as arginine and nitrogen metabolism and aminoacyl-tRNA biosynthesis, for 11 weeks. Our work found that metabolomics was a useful tool that contributed to further understanding of PM2.5-induced respiratory system damage and provided useful information for further pharmacological research on Colla corii asini, which may be valuable for therapeutic intervention.

A reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method has been developed to quantitatively determine matrine in liquid crystal nanoparticles. The chromatographic method is carried out using an isocratic system. The mobile phase was composed of methanol-PBS(pH6.8)-triethylamine (50 : 50 : 0.1%) with a flow rate of 1 mL/min with SPD-20A UV/vis detector and the detection wavelength was at 220 nm. The linearity of matrine is in the range of 1.6 to 200.0 μg/mL. The regression equation is y = 10706x − 2959 (R 2 = 1.0). The average recovery is 101.7%; RSD = 2.22%  (n = 9). This method provides a simple and accurate strategy to determine matrine in liquid crystalline nanoparticle.

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