Abstract
Polygonatum odoratum (Mill.) Druce belongs to the genus Polygonatum family of plants. In traditional Chinese medicine, the root of Polygonatum odoratum, Rhizoma Polygonati Odorati, is used both for food and medicine to prevent and treat metabolic disorders such as hyperlipidemia, hyperglycemia, obesity and cardiovascular disease. However, there is no solid experimental evidence to support these applications, and the underlying mechanism is also needed to be elucidated. Here, we examined the effect of the extract of Rhizoma Polygonati Odorati (ER) on metabolic disorders in diet-induced C57BL/6 obese mice. In the preventive experiment, the ER blocked body weight gain, and lowered serum total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG) and fasting blood glucose, improved glucose tolerance test (GTT) and insulin tolerance test (ITT), reduced the levels of serum insulin and leptin, and increased serum adiponectin levels in mice fed with a high-fat diet significantly. In the therapeutic study, we induced obesity in the mice and treated the obese mice with ER for two weeks. We found that ER treatments reduced serum TG and fasting blood glucose, and improved glucose tolerance in the mice. Gene expression analysis showed that ER increased the mRNA levels of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPAR) γ and α and their downstream target genes in mice livers, adipose tissues and HepG2 cells. Our data suggest that ER ameliorates metabolic disorders and enhances the mRNA expression of PPARs in obese C57BL/6 mice induced by high-fat diet.
Highlights
Metabolic syndrome (MS) is a group of lipid and glucose metabolic disorders including obesity, hyperlipidemia, hyperglycemia and atherosclerosis etc [1,2]
The composition in ER To determine the chromatographic profiles of ER, the extract was analyzed by High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) at 205 nm (Figure 1A), and 280 nm (Figure 1B)
Our results showed that ER consists of 81.61% total polysaccharide, 0.26% total flavonoid, 0.61% total phenolic and 2.56% total amino acids (Table 1), indicating that polysaccharides are the main component of ER
Summary
Metabolic syndrome (MS) is a group of lipid and glucose metabolic disorders including obesity, hyperlipidemia, hyperglycemia and atherosclerosis etc [1,2]. The increasing prevalence of MS has been considered as an epidemic public and economic problem worldwide [3]. Clinical practices have repeatedly proven that prescription drugs are effective in the treatment of MS, side-effects such as liver and kidney toxicity cannot be ignored [4]. The use of functional food or dietary therapy for MS is attractive to the public. In China, many medicinal herbs such as coptis, ginseng, astragalus mongholicus and green tea are used in formulations for the prevention and treatment of MS and are safe and effective [5,6]. Several food-medicine duals, such as bitter melon, ginger, celery, citrus maxima, hawthorn and red kojic rice have been proven to be beneficial to the disorders of metabolism [7]
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