Effect of kidney-reinforcing, blood-activating and stasis-removing recipes on adhesion molecule expression of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells from chronic aplastic anemia patients.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the effect of kidney-reinforcing, blood-activating and stasis-removing recipes on adhesion molecule expression of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) from patients with chronic aplastic anemia (CAA). METHODS: We used three Traditional Chinese Medicine recipes, namely a kidney-reinforcing recipe (KRR), blood-activating and stasis-removing recipe (BASRR), and kidney-reinforcing, blood-activating and stasis-removing recipe (KRBASRR), and a normal saline control to prepare herbal medicine serum in Sprague Dawley rats. Thirty CAA patients were enrolled in the experimental group, including 17 kidney-Yang deficient patients and 13 kidney-Yin deficient patients. Ten healthy individuals were included in the control group. MSCs were isolated from bone marrow samples, and the cell density was observed to measure their proliferation ability by microscopy on days 2, 7, and 14 after isolation. In addition, the expression of adhesion molecules of bone marrow MSCs (CD106, CD49d, CD31 and CD44) were detected by flow cytometry after 48 h of treatment with the four different herbal medicine serums. RESULTS: The proliferation of MSCs from kidney-Yang deficient and kidney-Yin deficient patients was weaker than that of MSCs from the control group. The expression of all adhesion molecules of bone marrow MSCs from CAA patients was obviously lower than that in the control group (P < 0.01). The expression of CD49d and CD31 in MSCs from patients with a kidney-Yin deficiency was lower than in those with a kidney-yang deficiency (P < 0.05 and P < 0.01, respectively). For kidney-Yang deficient patients, CD31 expression in the KRBASRR group was significantly higher than that in the BASRR group (P < 0.01), while CD44 in the KRBASRR group was significantly higher than that in both KRR and BASRR groups (P < 0.01). For kidney-Yin deficient patients, CD106 and CD49d expression in the KRBASRR group was obviously higher than that in the KRR group (P < 0.05), while CD31 and CD44 expression in the KRBASRR group was significantly higher than that in both KRR and BASRR groups (P < 0.05 and P < 0.01, respectively). CONCLUSION: The bone marrow microenvironment in CAA patients is abnormal. The effect of KRBASRR may be better than that of KRR and BASRR for kidney-Yang deficient and kidney-Yin deficient patients by improving the expression levels of MSC adhesion molecules.