Protective effects of steroids from Allium chinense against H₂O₂‐induced oxidative stress in rat cardiac H9C2 cells

Abstract

Allium chinense, a traditional herbal medicine, has been used for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases for hundreds of years. In this study, A. chinense steroids (ACSs) including three steroidal glycosides and their parent aglycones were isolated from the bulbs of A. chinense. For the first time, their cardioprotective effects were evaluated in cultured rat cardiac H9C2 cells by pretreatment with ACSs for 24 h before exposure to 0.2 mm H(2)O(2). The results showed the cell viability decreased markedly when H9C2 cells were incubated with 0.2 mm H(2)O(2) alone for 2 h, while the cell lipid peroxidation (estimated by the excessive production of nitric oxide and malondialdehyde) and intracellular free calcium concentration ([Ca(2+)](i)) increased significantly. The addition of 20 microm (below the toxic concentration) of ACSs notably attenuated the cellular injury induced by H(2)O(2). The effects of ACSs in our experiments were similar to those of nimodipine, a clinically applied calcium channel blocker. Preliminary analysis of the structure-activity relationship indicated that ACSs with a spirostane-type skeleton exhibited stronger protection than that with a furostane-type skeleton, and glycosylation of the steroids could substantially lower the protective activities. The above results suggested the protective effects of steroids originated from A. chinense on the oxidative injury of H9C2 cells and ACSs may have potential for preventing cardiac injuries induced by oxidative stress.

Inhibition of Cyclooxygenase-1 and Cyclooxygenase-2 Impairs Trypanosoma cruzi Entry into Cardiac Cells and Promotes Differential Modulation of the Inflammatory Response

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Spirostanol saponins from Chinese onion (Allium chinense) exert pronounced anti-inflammatory and anti-proliferative activities

“…Previous phytochemical investigation has led to the identification of sulphur-containing compounds (Pino, Fuentes, & Correa, 2001), nitrogen-containing compounds (Okuyama et al, 1989) and steroidal saponins (Jiang, Wang, Yao, & Susumu, 1998;Matsuura, Ushiroguchi, Itakura, & Fuwa, 1989;Peng, Yao, Tezuka, Kikuchi, & Narui, 1996), among which steroidal saponins are believed to account for a variety of biological activities, such as antitumour (Baba et al, 2000;Yu et al, 2015), anticoagulation (Jiang et al, 1998), cardioprotective (Kuroda, Mimaki, Kameyama, Sashida, & Nikaido, 1995;Ren, Qiao, Yang, & Zhou, 2010), and cyclic AMP phosphodiesterase inhibitory activities (Kuroda et al, 1995).…”

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