The anti-neuroinflammatory effects of dehydromiltirone and related mechanisms / 中国药理学通报

ABSTRACT

Aim To investigate the anti-neuroinflam-matory activities of dehydromiltirone and the underlying mechanisms in LPS-stimulated microglial cell line BV2 cells. Methods BV2 cells were pre-treated with de-hydromiltirone, then stimulated by LPS. The levels of nitric oxide( NO) were measured by Griess assay, and the concentrations of pro-inflammatory cytokines were measured by ELISA assay. Confocal fluorescence mi-croscopy was used to measure the expression of MAC-1, the biomarker of activated BV2 cells. The levels of-inducible nitric oxide synthase ( iNOS ) , cyclooxygen-ase-2 ( COX-2 ) , NF-κB and PI3 K/Akt were deter-mined by Western blot analysis. Results The treat-ment of dehydromiltirone significantly inhibited the pro-duction of NO, TNF-α and IL-6, attenuated the ex-pression of iNOS and COX-2 protein, and dampened the microglial activation in LPS-stimulated BV2 cells. The mechanistic study revealed that dehydromiltirone inhibited the phosphorylation of PI3 K and Akt in LPS-stimulated BV2 cells, and decreased NF-κB activation by suppressing the degradation of IκB. Conclusion dehydromiltirone shows significant anti-neuroinflamma-tory effects through inhibiting PI3 K/Akt phosphoryla-tion and then inhibiting NF-κB signaling pathway.