Inhibition of TNF-α Oncogene Expression by Artemisia Annua L. Extract Against Pioglitazone Side Effects in Male Albino Mice.

Pioglitazone (Actos) is one of the most recent oral antidiabetic drugs for treating the second type of diabetes mellitus as a common chronic and lifelong disease, but with harmful side effects. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of Artemisia annua L. extract against the Actos drug side effects in the male albino mice. In present study, the use of Actos drug alone induced hepatotoxicity, renal inflammation, hematological disorders and bladder cancer, which are manifested by biochemical abnormalities and histopathological changes, moreover, the severity of toxicity depends on its dose. In contrast, the concurrent treatment with both Actos drug (45 mg/kg) and Artemisia extract (4 g/kg) was effective against the harmful side effects of the Actos drug. Where, the biochemical, hematological and histopathological investigations showed that the hepatotoxicity, renal inflammation, hematological disorders and histopathological changes were improved using combination of Actos and Artemisia extract. In addition, the results of TNF-ɑ oncogene expression levels in bladder tissues were significantly decreased by about 99.99% using the mix of both Actos drug and Artemisia extract. In conclusion, these findings reveal that the Artemisia annua extract on TNF-ɑ oncogene expression level is very significant and effective natural product against harmful side effects of pioglitazone which associated with an increased risk of incident bladder cancer among people, but for application more studies must be achieved in that field.

An ABC transporter complex encoded by Aluminum Sensitive 3 and NAP3 is required for phosphate deficiency responses in Arabidopsis.

Phosphate is essential for cell metabolism in all organisms. As it is often limiting in the soil, plants have evolved various mechanisms to cope with low-phosphate conditions. Here, we report that Aluminum Sensitive 3 and NAP3, two genes previously identified to function in aluminum tolerance, play a critical role in plant response to phosphate deficiency. Two T-DNA insertional alleles of ALS3 gene in Arabidopsis showed hypersensitive responses to phosphate limiting conditions. Compared to the wild type, als3 mutant plants exhibited more severe root growth inhibition and developed more root hairs under phosphate starvation. Interestingly, these phenotypic changes occurred only when the low-phosphate medium is supplemented with sucrose, suggesting that ALS3 regulates low-phosphate response in a sugar-dependent manner. Furthermore, NAP3, a gene encoding the nucleotide binding domain protein that physically interacts with ALS3, was implicated in the same pathway in response to low-P. The nap3 mutant showed the same phenotype as the als3 mutant when grown on phosphate depletion medium. We conclude that ALS3 and NAP3 protein form an ABC transporter complex that is required for sugar-dependent response to phosphate deficiency.