Abstract
Bushen Huoxue recipe (BSHXR) is a classic Chinese herbal prescription for nourishing the kidney and activating blood circulation. It consists of six herbs: Astragali radix, Angelicae sinensis radix, Ligustici Chuanxiong Rhizoma, Cuscutae semen, Taxilli Herba, and Dipsaci Radix, and the main active constituents of BSHXR are ferulic acid, calycosin-7-glucopyranoside, hyperoside, quercitrin, and asperosaponin VI. In clinical practice, BSHXR is traditionally used to treat failed pregnancy and its complications. However, little is known about the underlying mechanism of BSHXR for the treatment of implantation loss during early pregnancy. In the current study, controlled ovarian hyperstimulation was induced in mice as our implantation loss model, and we evaluated the effects of BSHXR on implantation, decidualization, decidual angiogenesis, and reproductive outcome. We showed that BSHXR could regulate the supraphysiological levels of serum estrogen and progesterone observed in these mice, and also act on estrogen and progesterone receptors in the stroma and epithelium. BSHXR also enhanced FGF2 expression in the vascular sinus folding area of the decidua, thus potentially reducing implantation loss during early pregnancy and contributing to placentation and survival of the fetuses. Taken together, our findings provide scientific evidence for the application of BSHXR in the clinic as a treatment for implantation loss during early pregnancy, and warrant further investigation of BSHXR as an effective treatment for failed pregnancy and its complications.
Highlights
Infertility is faced by approximately 15% of couples worldwide and is becoming a growing social and economic concern for many countries (Wang and Dey, 2006)
The qualitative determination of Bushen Huoxue recipe (BSHXR) was performed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)
Since we found defective blood vessel formation around the embryo in the model group, we further investigated the effects of BSHXR on decidual angiogenesis in pregnant mice
Summary
Infertility is faced by approximately 15% of couples worldwide and is becoming a growing social and economic concern for many countries (Wang and Dey, 2006). The development of in vitro fertilization and Mechanism of BSHXR on Pregnancy embryo transfer (IVF-ET) technology has contributed significantly to the treatment of infertility, the pregnancy rate and delivery rate remain relatively low in IVF-ET cycles (European IVF-Monitoring Consortium [EIM] et al, 2016). According to a systematic review of published literature regarding Chinese medicines, 339,792 publications focusing on the study of Chinese medicines were identified until 15 April 2013, only 12,912 (3.8%) papers studied pregnancy or pregnancy related applications (Li et al, 2014). Among the literature about traditional Chinese medicines and pregnancy, it is discovered that Chinese medicines could affect various aspects of pregnancy, such as hormone regulation, endometrial receptivity, immune responses, infertility stress, and reproductive outcome of IVF-ET (Huang and Chen, 2008)
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