Calycosin prevents bone loss induced by hindlimb unloading

Abstract

Bone loss induced by microgravity exposure seriously endangers the astronauts’ health, but its countermeasures still have certain limitations. The study aims to find potential protective drugs for the prevention of the microgravity-induced bone loss. Here, we utilized the network pharmacology approach to discover a natural compound calycosin by constructing the compound-target interaction network and analyzing the topological characteristics of the network. Furthermore, the hind limb unloading (HLU) rats’ model was conducted to investigate the potential effects of calycosin in the prevention of bone loss induced by microgravity. The results indicated that calycosin treatment group significantly increased the bone mineral density (BMD), ameliorated the microstructure of femoral trabecular bone, the thickness of cortical bone and the biomechanical properties of the bone in rats, compared that in the HLU group. The analysis of bone turnover markers in serum showed that both the bone formation markers and bone resorption markers decreased after calycosin treatment. Moreover, we found that bone remodeling-related cytokines in serum including IFN-γ, IL-6, IL-8, IL-12, IL-4, IL-10 and TNF-α were partly recovered after calycosin treatment compared with HLU group. In conclusion, calycosin partly recovered hind limb unloading-induced bone loss through the regulation of bone remodeling. These results provided the evidence that calycosin might play an important role in maintaining bone mass in HLU rats, indicating its promising application in the treatment of bone loss induced by microgravity.

Evaluation of microalgae on preventing bone loss in C57BL/6J mice induced by hindlimb suspension

“…Hindlimb suspension (HLS) utilizing rodents is a recognized method for simulating microgravity on Earth and is widely used to study the changes in certain physiological systems under the weightless conditions of space (Jin et al., 2022). In the HLS model, mice tails were first disinfected with 75% alcohol, and then, a sterile needle was used to make a hole near the base of the tail, through which a silver wire was inserted and tied to the tail.…”