The effects of nodakenin on airway inflammation, hyper-responsiveness and remodeling in a murine model of allergic asthma

Abstract

Context: Nodakenin is a major coumarin glucoside in the root of Peucedanum decursivum Maxim, a commonly used traditional Chinese medicine for the treatment of asthma and chronic bronchitis for thousands of years.

Objective: In this work, the anti-asthma potential of nodakenin was studied by investigation of its effect to suppress airway inflammation, hyper-responsiveness and remodeling in a murine model of chronic asthma.

Materials and methods: BALB/c mice sensitized to ovalbumin (OVA) were challenged with aerosolized OVA for 8 weeks, orally administered with nodakenin at doses of 5, 10 and 20 mg/kg before each OVA challenge.

Results: Compared with the model group, nodakenin treatment markedly inhibited airway inflammation, hyper-responsiveness and remodeling, showing improvement in subepithelial fibrosis, smooth muscle hypertrophy, and goblet cell hyperplasia, and decreased levels of interleukin (IL)-4, IL-5, IL-13 and matrix metalloproteinase-2/-9 in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, and the level of OVA-specific IgE in serum. In addition, the NF-κB DNA-binding activity in lung tissues was also reduced by nodakenin treatment.

Conclusions: These data indicated that nodakenin might mitigate the development of chronic experimental allergic asthma.

• Airway hyper-responsiveness
• airway inflammation
• airway remodeling
• asthma
• nodakenin

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all subjects participating in the study. We also feel indebted to Dr Linfu Zhou, Dr Qiang Du (Department of Respiratory Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital, Nanjing Medical University) and Dr Wenjing Dai (Department of Respiratory Medicine, The First Hospital, HeFei, China) for constructive comments.