The Effect and Mechanism of Action of Danhong Injection on Lipid Peroxidation and Endothelial Dysfunction Coronary Heart Disease: An Animal Study

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine therapeutic effects of Danhong injection (DHI) on coronary heart disease (CHD) and determine the mechanism of these effects.Methods: A total of 20 Sprague-Dawley (SD) provide in full on first mention rats divided into control, CHD, DHI-0.5 mL/kg and DHI-2 mL/kg groups with, 5 rats in each group the minimum number to carry out statistical tests is 6, the authors are ad-vised to add more rats to each group. CHD were effected by injecting pituitrin (30 U/kg) for three consecutive days, and CHD rats were injected with 0.5 mL/kg or 2 mL/kg DHI daily. After 4-week treatment, echocardiography was performed to observe the left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), left ventricular end-diastolic dimension (LVEDD), and left ventricular end-systolic dimension (LVESD) in rats. The serum of rats was collected for measuring the levels of lipid metabolism-related indicators oxidation-related factors, myocardial injury markers and endothelial function-related indicators. Additionally, the expression of mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway-related proteins in the heart tissues was revealed by western blot.Results: There was a significant drop in LVESD and LVEDD and a significant rise in LVEF after DHI intervention for CHD rats. Besides, DHI also significantly reduced the serum level of Triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC), and low-density lipopro-tein cholesterol (LDL-C), up-regulated high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and lowered the level of creatine kinase isoenzyme (CK-MB), cardiac troponin I (cTnI), malondialdehyde (MDA), and endothelin-1 (ET-1), and up-regulated glutathione peroxidase (GPx), catalase (CAT), and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity and the level of nitric oxide (NO) and endothe-lial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) in CHD rats. Moreover, DHI significantly reduced phosphorylated-protein 38 (p-p38) and phosphorylated-c-Jun N-terminal kinase (p-JNK) protein level and inhibited the activity of MAPK pathway in the heart tissues of rats.Conclusions: DHI treatment showed efficacy in alleviating endothelial dysfunction and lipid peroxidation and this effect is prob-ably achieved through MAPK pathway.