No abstract

Neuronal apoptotic cell death plays an important role in many neurological disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and ischemic stroke. Spatholobi Caulis (SC) has been widely used in traditional herbal medicine for the treatment of cancer, inflammation, viral infection, and anemia. However, the protective effects of SC extract (SCE) against apoptotic cell death in the brain have not been reported. We investigated the protective effects of SCE against neuronal injury etoposide-induced neurotoxicity and in rats subjected to focal transient ischemic stroke middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) for 45 min, followed by 7 days of reperfusion. The in vitro study demonstrated that SCE protected cells against etoposide-induced cell viability loss in SH-SY5Y cells. Apoptotic phenotypes, such as cleaved PARP and caspase-3, and oxidative stress in etoposide-treated cells were ameliorated by SCE treatment. In MCAO-reperfusion injury, SCE promoted neuronal survival and level of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) by reducing glial activation, oxidative stress, and apoptosis in the ipsilateral cortex. These results indicated that SCE exerted protective effects under etoposide treatment and in a MCAO-reperfusion model by reducing JNK and p38 MAPK activation. This study presents the first evidence that SCE has therapeutic potential for the treatment of ischemic stroke or neurological disorder-related cell death.

Palmultang (PM) is an herbal decoction that has been used to treat anorexia, anemia, general prostration, and weakness due to chronic illness since medieval times in Korea, China, and Japan. The present study focused on the inhibitory effects of PM on the production of inflammatory factors and on the activation of mechanisms in murine macrophages. PM suppressed the expression of nitric oxide (NO), inflammatory cytokines and inflammatory proteins by inhibiting nuclear factor (NF)-κB and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathways and by inducing heme oxygenase (HO)-1 expression. Collectively, our results explain the anti-inflammatory effect and inhibitory mechanism of PM in macrophages stimulated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS).

No abstract

We developed a method to detect biogenic amines and their metabolites in rat brain tissue using simultaneous high-performance liquid chromatography and a photodiode array detection. Measurements were made using a Hypersil Gold C-18 column (250 × 2.1 mm, 5 µm). The mobile phase was 5 mM perchloric acid containing 5 % acetonitrile. The correlation coefficient was 0.9995-0.9999. LODs (S/N = 3) and LOQs (S/N = 10) were as follows: dopamine 0.4 and 1.3 pg, 3, 4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid 8.4 and 28.0 pg, serotonin 0.4 and 1.3 pg, 5-hydroxyindolacetic acid 3.4 and 11.3 pg, and homovanillic acid 8.4 and 28.0 pg. This method does not require derivatization steps, and is more sensitive than the widely used HPLC-UV method.