Herb Formula (GCis) Prevents Pulmonary Infection Secondary to Intracerebral Hemorrhage by Enhancing Peripheral Immunity and Intestinal Mucosal Immune Barrier

Abstract

Lung infection is a common complication induced by stroke and seriously affects the prognosis and life quality of patients. However, effective therapeutic strategies are still lacking. In the present study, the herb formula GCis was confirmed to prevent pulmonary infection induced by intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). The animal model of lung infection induced by ICH, GCis (Ginseng Radix et Rhizoma, Aconiti Lateralis Radix Praeparata, and Cistanches Herba) was orally administrated every day for 7 days. Lung microbial biomass and pathological results showed that the GCis formula pretreatment significantly reduced lung bacterial biomass and alleviated pathological abnormalities. These results indicated that the GCis formula has a clear pharmacological effect on preventing lung infection induced by ICH. Immunosuppression induced by ICH seemed to be the main mechanism of lung infection. Our results showed that the spleen and thymus indexes, WBC, and LY% contents were significantly increased in the GCis formula group. Moreover, bone marrow cells were further analyzed by transcriptome sequencing, and GO and KEGG enrichment analysis results showed that immune function was the main pathway enriched by differential genes after GCis formula intervention. More importantly, our results showed that GCis pretreatment had no significant effect on the mRNA expression of IL-1β, IL-6, and TNF-α in the brain. These results indicated that the GCis formula could enhance immunity after ICH. The intestinal barrier function was further investigated in the present study, considering the origin of the source of infection. Our results showed that the mRNA expressions of intestinal ZO-1, SIgA, and MUC2 were significantly increased, villi structure was intact, inflammatory cell infiltration was reduced, and goblet cell number was increased after GCis formula treatment. These results suggest that the GCis formula can enhance the intestinal mucosal immune barrier. This study provides a herb formula (GCis) that could enhance peripheral immunity and intestinal mucosal immune barrier to prevent pulmonary infection induced by ICH. It would be beneficial in the prevention of severe clinical infections.

Knockdown of LCN2 Attenuates Brain Injury After Intracerebral Hemorrhage via Suppressing Pyroptosis

“…The herb formula (Ginseng Radix et Rhizoma, Aconiti Lateralis Radix Praeparata, and Cistanches Herba) significantly downregulated LCN2, which suggests that LCN2 serves a potential therapeutic target for ICH-induced complication. 45 In the present investigation, we found that LCN2 was highly expressed in ICH, which was consistent with previous studies. Furthermore, our findings that the knockdown of LCN2 resulted in reduced brain water content and improvement in the Garcia score and Beam balance score, provides additional evidence that the LCN2 suppression mitigates brain injury following ICH.…”

Detection of respiratory pathogenic bacterial nucleic acid detection by Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification in patients with bacterial pulmonary infections

“…When the body is in a severe systemic inflammatory response due to bacterial and fungal infections, etc., the PCT level in the blood increases significantly [ 22 , 23 ]. WBC is also a common indicator of bacterial infection and tends to increase significantly in the presence of bacterial infection in the lung [ 24 , 25 ]. As an acute temporal response protein and a commonly used non-specific clinical marker of inflammation, CRP can reflect the degree of infection in the body.…”