Antiinflammatory effect of the ethanolic extract of Korean native herb Potentilla rugulosa Nakai in Bisphenol-a-stimulated A549 cells

ABSTRACT

Potentilla rugulosa Nakai (P. rugulosa) is a perennial herb in the Rosaceae family and found in the Korean mountains. Previously, our findings demonstrated that P. rugulosa contains numerous polyphenols and flavonoids exhibiting important antioxidant and anti-obesity bioactivities. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a xenoestrogen that was shown to produce pulmonary inflammation in humans. However, the mechanisms underlying BPA-induced inflammation remain to be determined. The aim of this study was to examine whether ethanolic extract of P. rugulosa exerted an inhibitory effect on BPA-induced inflammation utilizing an adenocarcinoma human alveolar basal epithelial cell line A549. The P. rugulosa extract inhibited BPA-mediated cytotoxicity by reducing levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Further, P. rugulosa extract suppressed the upregulation of various pro-inflammatory mediators induced by activation of the nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cell (NF-κB) and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathways. In addition, inhibition of the NF-κB and MAPK signaling pathways by P. rugulosa extract was found to occur via decrease in the transcriptional activity of NF-κB. Further, blockade of phosphorylation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) and stress-activated protein kinase/Jun N-terminal kinase (SAPK/JNK) was noted. Thus, our findings suggest that the ethanolic extract of P. rugulosa may act as a natural anti-inflammatory therapeutic agent.

KEYWORDS:

• ROS
• cell viability
• pulmonary inflammation
• NF-κB
• MAPK

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Institute of Biological Resources (NIBR), funded by the Ministry of Environment (MOE) of the Republic of Korea under Grant NIBR201828101, and by the Chung-Ang University Graduate Research Scholarship in 2021.

Author contributions

J.Y.L and Y.G.C. conceived and designed the research. J.Y.L, W.S.C, J.S.L, S.L¹, J.Y.S, Y.L, S.L², S.R.C, and C.H.L. conducted the experiments and analyzed the data. J.Y.L, Y.G.C, W.S.C, and J.Y.S. analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Data availability statement

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author (Ji-Yun Lee) on reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15287394.2023.2240835

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.