Betulinic acid prevents alcohol-induced liver damage by improving the antioxidant system in mice

Abstract

Betulinic acid (BA), a pentacyclic lupane-type triterpene, has a wide range of bioactivities. The main objective of this work was to evaluate the hepatoprotective activity of BA and the potential mechanism underlying the ability of this compound to prevent liver damage induced by alcohol in vivo. Mice were given oral doses of BA (0.25, 0.5, and 1.0 mg/kg) daily for 14 days, and induced liver injury by feeding 50% alcohol orally at the dosage of 10 ml/kg after 1 h last administration of BA. BA pretreatment significantly reduced the serum levels of alanine transaminase, aspartate transaminase, total cholesterol, and triacylglycerides in a dose-dependent manner in the mice administered alcohol. Hepatic levels of glutathione, superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, and catalase were remarkably increased, while malondialdehyde contents and microvesicular steatosis in the liver were decreased by BA in a dose-dependent manner after alcohol-induced liver injury. These findings suggest that the mechanism underlying the hepatoprotective effects of BA might be due to increased antioxidant capacity, mainly through improvement of the tissue redox system, maintenance of the antioxidant system, and decreased lipid peroxidation in the liver.

Ameliorative effect of betulinic acid on oxidative damage and apoptosis in the splenocytes of dexamethasone treated mice

“…BA was semi-synthesized as previously described with a purity of 96.5% as confirmed by high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS) [12,15]. Cell culture plastics were purchased from Costar (Corning, NY, USA).…”

“…Every effort was done to minimize the number of animals and their suffering. The dose of BA and duration of treatment were proposed based on previous studies [15,18]. The mice were randomly divided into five groups: Group I (the control, no Dex, no BA), Group II (the Dex-induced splenocytes apoptosis model, without BA), Groups III, IV and V (Dex-induced mice received low, medium and high dose of BA at 0.25, 0.5, and 1 mg/kg body weight, respectively).…”

“…BA exhibits a wide variety of biological and pharmacological activities including anti-tumor, anti-HIV, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, immunomodulation, anti-neoplastic, antiobese, antiangiogenesis and anti-plasmodial properties [12][13][14]. BA has both direct intrinsic antioxidant as well as indirect antioxidant effects by increasing levels of catalase (CAT), SOD, glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) and by decreasing levels of MDA and ROS in vitro and in vivo [15][16][17]. It was reported that the total number of splenocytes and the weight ratio of the spleen were enhanced in mice treatment with BA [18].…”

Birch Bark Dry Extract by Supercritical Fluid Technology: Extract Characterisation and Use for Stabilisation of Semisolid Systems

“…antibacterial, antiviral, anti-parasite BE: [5,6]; BA: [7][8][9]; BE/BA: [10,11]; BE/BA/OA: [12]; LU/BA: [13]; OA/BA: [14] hepatoprotective BE: [15]; BE/BA: [16]; OA: [17][18][19][20]; LU: [21]; BA: [22] antitumor BE: [23,24]; BA: [25,26] BE/BA: [27,28]; LU: [29]; OA: [18,19,30] wound healing extract: [31][32][33]; BA: [34]; OA: [35,36] anti-inflammatory BE: [5,37]; LU: [38,39]; OA: [18,40] Apart from these pharmacological effects, birch bark extract is able to act as a gelling agent and Pickering emulsifier [41][42][43]. Together with its anti-inflammatory and wound healing effects, this makes birch bark dry extract interesting for the stabilisation of semisolid systems, such as gels and creams, acting as an active ingredient and an excipient in parallel.…”

Knowledge Discovery of Suppressive Effect of Disease and Increased Anti-oxidative Function by Low-dose Radiation Using Self-organizing Map

“…Other reports showing the oxidative stress-related disease suppressive effect of antioxidants were col- and selectively extracted from these reports [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45] ( Table 2). Dataset 2 had 122 records in 17 reports and 6% missing values.…”