Chemical Composition of Bawei Longzuan Granule and Its Anti‐Arthritic Activity on Collagen‐Induced Arthritis in Rats by Inhibiting Inflammatory Responses

Abstract

Bawei Longzuan granule (BLG) is a representative Zhuang medicine preparation. The present work aims to characterize the chemical constituents of BLG and evaluate its anti‐arthritic activity. The major chemical constituents of BLG were tentatively identified by ultra‐performance liquid chromatography‐quadrupole time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (UPLC‐Q‐TOF/MS), which revealed the presence of some alkaloids (e. g., magnoflorine, sinomenine and nitidine) and flavonoids (e. g., hesperidin, diosmin and sinensetin) that may be partly responsible for the anti‐arthritic effect of BLG. In addition, the collagen‐induced arthritis (CIA) model in rats was induced by intradermal injection of bovine collagen‐II in complete Freund's adjuvant at the base of tail. The CIA rats received oral administration of BLG (1.25, 2.5 and 5 g/kg) for 30 days. Then, various indicators were determined to evaluate its anti‐arthritic activity, including paw swelling, arthritic score, body weight, knee joint pathology, thymus index and spleen index. Additionally, the serum levels of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)‐α, interferon (IFN)‐γ, interleukin (IL)‐1β, IL‐6, IL‐4 and IL‐10 were measured to determine the underlying mechanisms. The results showed that BLG efficiently ameliorated the severity of arthritis in CIA rats by decreasing paw swelling and arthritis score and improving the histological lesions of knee joint. Moreover, the serum levels of several pro‐inflammatory cytokines (i. e., IL‐1β, TNF‐α, IL‐6 and IFN‐γ) were downregulated, whereas two anti‐inflammatory factors (i. e., IL‐4 and IL‐10) were upregulated after BLG administration. These results indicated that BLG possessed promising therapeutic effect on collagen‐induced arthritis by inhibiting inflammatory responses. BLG can be used as a complementary or alternative traditional medicine to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

Chemical Composition of Pterospermum heterophyllum Root and its Anti-Arthritis Effect on Adjuvant-Induced Arthritis in Rats via Modulation of Inflammatory Responses

“…RA is the most prevalent chronic and long-term autoimmune inflammatory disease (Wang et al, 2017a;Li et al, 2019a;Saleem et al, 2020;Zhu et al, 2020). Although there are many anti-RA drugs in clinic, such as immunosuppressants, biological agents, DMARDs, steroidal drugs, and NSAIDs, most of them are associated with long-term adverse effects and costs (Li et al, 2019b;Dai et al, 2020;Zhu et al, 2020).…”

“…Therefore, this study has greatly enriched the chemical constituents and diversity. Among them, 15 flavonoids, including procyanidin B2 (peak 9) (Wang et al, 2017b), dihydromyricetin (peak 10) (Chu et al, 2018), (-)-epicatechin (peak 11) (Osman et al, 2019), puerarin (peak 12) (Wang et al, 2016), rutin (peak 24) (Sun et al, 2017), naringin (peak 28) (Ahmad et al, 2014), hesperidin (peak 32) (Li et al, 2019a), myricetin (peak 35) (Yuan et al, 2015), eriodictyol (peak 40) (Lei et al, 2020), quercetin (peak 41) (Saccol et al, 2019), naringenin (peak 43) (Zhu et al, 2015), kaempferol (peak 44) (Pan et al, 2018), diosmetin (peak 46) (Chen et al, 2019), nobiletin (peak 51) (Li et al, 2019a), and tangeretin (peak 53) (Li et al, 2019c), have been reported to have arthritis inhibitory effect in rats. Additionally, cinnamaldehyde (peak 8, phenylpropanoid) (Mateen et al, 2019), ursolic acid (peak 65, triterpenoid) (Kim et al, 2018), linoleic acid (peak 67, fatty acid) (Wang et al, 2011) and emodin (peak 54, other) (Zhu et al, 2013) were also exhibited anti-arthritis activities in vivo.…”

“…Additionally, the serum levels of these inflammatory mediators were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits (Lin et al, 2013;Wang et al, 2017a). Currently, immunosuppressants, biological agents and disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), and steroidal and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are commonly used for the treatment of RA, but most of them display long-term adverse effects, toxicity and comorbidities (Dai et al, 2020;Li et al, 2019a, Li et al, 2019bRui et al, 2019). As a result of this, exploring effective and safe anti-RA drug candidates from natural products, especially traditional folk medicines, could be a momentous breakthrough.…”

“…Traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) are decisive complementary and alternative medicines, which have been verified to be effective treating RA for centuries with more safety and little side-effects in China and other Southeast Asian countries (Bao et al, 2018;Li et al, 2019a, Li et al, 2019bLin et al, 2013;Jing et al, 2019;Yang et al, 2020). Pterospermum heterophyllum Hance is native only to China and widely distributed in Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan provinces, belonging to the Sterculiaceae family (Editorial Committee of Traditional Chinese Medicine 1999; Yang et al, , 2019a.…”

Triptolide Alleviates Murine Arthritis by Inhibiting Osteoclast Differentiation via TRAF6/MAPKs/NFATc1 Signaling Pathway

“…Arthritis index (AI) was used as a measure of CIA. Disease severity was scored 0-4 (0=no edema or swelling, 1=swelling in toe joint, 2=swelling in metatarsophalangeal joint and foot pad, 3=swelling of the feet below the ankle joint, 4=swelling of the entire paw and joint malformation) [29]. The score was less than 16 and AI > 2 was considered as CIA.…”