Hypericum triquetrifolium—Derived Factors Downregulate the Production Levels of LPS‐Induced Nitric Oxide and Tumor Necrosis Factor‐α in THP‐1 Cells

Abstract

Based on knowledge from traditional Arab herbal medicine, this in vitro study aims to examine the anti-inflammatory mechanism of Hypericum triquetrifolium by measuring the expression and release of pro-inflammatory cytokines, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukine-6 (IL-6), and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) in human monocytic cells, THP-1. The effects were assessed by measuring the levels of secretory proteins and mRNA of TNF-α and IL-6, the levels of nitric oxide (NO) secretion and the expression of iNOS in THP-1 cells. Cells were treated with 5 μg lipopolysaccharide/ml (LPS) in the presence and absence of increasing concentrations of extracts from the aerial parts of H. triquetrifolium. During the entire experimental period, we used extract concentrations (up to 250 μg mL−1) that had no cytotoxic effects, as measured with MTT and LDH assays. Hypericum triquetrifolium extracts remarkably suppressed the LPS-induced NO release, significantly attenuated the LPS-induced transcription of iNOS and inhibited in a dose-dependent manner the expression and release of TNF-α. No significant effects were observed on the release of IL-6. Taken together, these results suggest that H. triquetrifolium probably exerts anti-inflammatory effects through the suppression of TNF-α and iNOS expressions.

Cancer Treatment by Greco-Arab and Islamic Herbal Medicine

“…Several studies have revealed that natural products exhibit an extensive spectrum of biological activities such as, stimulation of the immune system, antibacterial, antiviral, anti-hepatotoxic, anti-ulcer, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anti-mutagenic, and anti-cancer effects [6,36,66,[84][85][86]. A variety of grains, cereals, nuts, soy products, olives, beverages such as tea and coffee, and spices including turmeric, garlic, ginger, black pepper, cumin and caraway confer a protective effect against cancer [33,35,36,66,85,87].…”

The effect ofHypericum perforatumon isolated rat aorta

“…Even though a number of studies have been conducted to understand the mechanism of HP treatment on various disease conditions (Albert et al, 2002;Tedeschi et al, 2003;De Paola et al, 2005;Genovese et al, 2006a,b;Hammer et al, 2007;Saad et al, 2008;Dost et al, 2009;Cirak et al, 2010;Kraus et al, 2010;Samadi et al, 2010) only a few of them have reported the effect of HP on contractility of vascular system (Melzer et al, 1991;Apaydin et al, 2001;Gilani et al, 2005;Khan et al, 2009Khan et al, , 2010, however, there are no scientific reports with HP detailing its modulatory effects on the vascular tone. Hence, this study has investigated the vascular effects of HP at both smooth muscle and endothelial level.…”

“…Another origin of NO is iNOS which is responsible for the detrimental effect of NO in the inflammatory process. Previous researchers have described the inhibition of iNOS by HP (Tedeschi et al, 2003;Saad et al, 2008;Kraus et al, 2010). Endothelial cell xantine oxidase forms ROS (Villar et al, 2008).…”

“…It has been demonstrated in the cell culture studies that the antidepressant effect of HP itself or its ingredients is not only mediated via serotonin receptor (Muller & Rossol, 1994), but also via the inhibition of serotonin and noradrenalin uptake (Neary & Bu, 1999;Neary et al, 2001). A significant proportion of their anti-inflammatory activity has been widely attributed to alteration in the oxidant status (Hunt et al, 2001;Lu et al, 2004;Zou et al, 2004;De Paola et al, 2005;Genovese et al, 2006a,b;Dost et al, 2009), however the suppression of the formation of 5-lipoxygenase and cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1) products (Albert et al, 2002), inhibition of prostaglandin E 2 production (Hammer et al, 2007), inhibition of inducible NO synthase (iNOS) expression (Tedeschi et al, 2003;Saad et al, 2008;Kraus et al, 2010) and tumor necrosis factor-α inhibition (Saad et al, 2008) have also been proposed to play a role.…”

Integration of Unani Medicine in Cancer Management

“…Several studies have revealed that natural products exhibit an extensive spectrum of biological activities such as, stimulation of the immune system, antibacterial, antiviral, anti-hepatotoxic, anti-ulcer, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antimutagenic, and anti-cancer effects. [11][12][13][14][15] In addition, a number of medicinal plants and herbs have also been reported to reduce the risk of cancer in multiple sites. [16][17] Many commonly These Unani medicinal herbs may be valuable for optimizing the conventional anticancer therapy; and they can be used in combination with conventional anticancer drugs as a supportive therapy to improve health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of cancer patients.…”