Ameliorating Adriamycin‐Induced Chronic Kidney Disease in Rats by Orally Administrated Cardiotoxin from Naja naja atra Venom

Abstract

Previous studies reported the oral administration of Naja naja atra venom (NNAV) reduced adriamycin-induced chronic kidney damage. This study investigated the effects of intragastric administrated cardiotoxin from Naja naja atra venom on chronic kidney disease in rats. Wistar rats were injected with adriamycin (ADR; 6 mg/kg body weight) via the tail vein to induce chronic kidney disease. The cardiotoxin was administrated daily by intragastric injection at doses of 45, 90, and 180 μg/kg body weight until the end of the protocol. The rats were placed in metabolic cages for 24 hours to collect urine, for determination of proteinuria, once a week. After 6 weeks, the rats were sacrificed to determine serum profiles relevant to chronic kidney disease, including albumin, total cholesterol, phosphorus, blood urea nitrogen, and serum creatinine. Kidney histology was examined with hematoxylin and eosin, periodic acid-Schiff, and Masson's trichrome staining. The levels of kidney podocin were analyzed by Western blot analysis and immunofluorescence. We found that cardiotoxin reduced proteinuria and can improve biological parameters in the adriamycin-induced kidney disease model. Cardiotoxin also reduced adriamycin-induced kidney pathology, suggesting that cardiotoxin is an active component of NNAV for ameliorating adriamycin-induced kidney damage and may have a potential therapeutic value on chronic kidney disease.

Neurotoxin from Naja naja atra venom inhibits skin allograft rejection in rats

“…In particular, NTX could modulate T cell functions through modulating T cell division and cell cycle progression. During the study period, no death or any clinical manifestation of toxicity were observed in rats and mice administered with NNAV and NTX [25,50]. These findings highlighted the therapeutic potential of NNAV and NTX on the treatment of acute rejection following skin allograft and other autoimmune disorders.…”

“…In the previous studies, we confirmed that oral administration of NNAV was effective in treatment of nephropathy [24], adjuvant arthritis [17] and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) [21]. NTX is relatively resistant to gastric protease degradation [17,24,25]. Thus we utilized oral administration of heat-treated NNAV and NTX in the present study.…”

“…Inflammation was always involved in allograft rejection. The effective antiinflammatory activity of NNAV and NTX is an additional benefit for preventing allograft rejection [17,25]. As observed from pathological examination, inflammation in skin allograft area was mitigated by NNAV and NTX.…”

“…The viability of each cell suspension was about 95% according to the Trypan blue dye (Shanghai Solarbio Science & Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai, China) exclusion test. The final cell density in the culture was 2.5 × 10 6 /ml [25].…”

Oestrogen‐related receptor reduces vitellogenin expression by crosstalk with the ecdysone receptor pathway in female silkworm, Bombyx mori

“…Unfertilized eggs were fixed overnight at 4 °C in 4% [volume/volume (v/v)] formaldehyde and were embedded in paraffin and cut into 5‐μm sections. The yolk granule was detected by H&E staining (Ding et al ., ).…”