Study advance of depressive animal models and its application in traditional Chinese medicines / 中国中药杂志

Depression is a kind of mental disease with main symptoms of low mood and lack of pleasure, which seriously endangers human health. An appropriate depressive animal model is of great significance for the study of depression and new antidepressant drugs, while the suitable selection and matching of experimental animals, modeling methods and evaluation indexes are critical to eva-luate the scientificity and effectiveness of the depressive animal model. The study advance of depressive animal models in the aspects of experimental animal selection, modeling principle and method, characteristics, evaluation indexes and their application in traditional Chinese medicine are summarized through the systematic review of relevant literatures in PubMed, CNKI and other databases. The depressive animal modeling methods utilized in recent studies include stress, glucocorticoid induction, reserpine induction, lipopolysaccharide induction, surgical modeling, gene knockout, joint application modeling methods. Stress method is better to simulate the depressive symptoms of clinical patients, whereas there are some deficiencies, such as long modeling time and large cost. The depressive animal models induced by glucocorticoid, reserpine and lipopolysaccharide have the advantages of short modeling time and good controllability, but with a poor reliability. The pathogenesis of surgical modeling is highly matched with that of clinical depressive patients, whereas it has the defect of long postoperative recovery period. Gene knockout models can be used to study the precise role of specific genes in depression. However, its applicability may be restricted in studies on depression. The joint application modeling method can improve its reliability and accuracy, and attracts more and more attention. This paper provides a reference for the selection of animal models in future studies of pathological mechanism of depression, and screening and evaluation of antidepressant drugs.

Effect and Mechanism of Active Fraction of Polyrhachis vicina in Treatment of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus(SLE) / 中国实验方剂学杂志

Objective: To observe the effect of an active fraction of Polyrhachis vicina (AFPV) on systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and its possible mechanism based on animal and cell models. Method: Totally 60 SD rats were randomly divided into normal control group, model group, prednisone acetate group (5 mg·kg-1), and high, medium and low-dose AFPV groups (400, 200, 100 mg·kg-1). SLE model was replicated with bovine serum albumin-Freund's complete (incomplete) adjuvant. Arthus reaction was observed to study the effect of AFPV on the diameter of back skin redness in rats with SLE. The expressions of anti-double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) antibody, complements 3 (C3), complement 4 (C4), immunoglobulin M (IgM), interleukin-1 (IL-1), interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-31 (IL-31) and interleukin-33 (IL-33) in serum were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. CD4+T cells were isolated from the spleens of MRL/lpr and C57BL/6J mice at the age of 16 to 18 weeks by immunomagnetic beads method. The expressions of miR-200a and miR-155 and the levels of zinc-finger-enhancer binding protein 1(ZEB1) and suppressor of cytokine signaling1(SOCS1) in CD4+T cells were observed to explore the effect of AFPV on SLE and its possible mechanism. Result: Compared with the normal group, the diameter of back skin swelling in the model group was significantly increased (PPPPPPP+T cells of MRL/lpr lupus mice. Compared with the model group, the expression of microRNA-200a increased significantly, the expression of microRNA-155 decreased significantly (PPConclusion: AFPV has therapeutic effect on rats with SLE, its mechanism may be related to the regulation of miR-200a/ZEB1 and miR-155/SOCS1.