Gunryeong-tang extracts protect against diabetes and heart dysfunction by reducing levels of inflammation and fibrosis in db/db mice

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is one of the most common metabolic disorders known to result from abnormal secretion of insulin and/or resistance to insulin. DM is characterized by hyperglycemia, decreased function of pancreatic islet cells and reduced insulin secretion. DM causes many types of complications, among which heart complications are a serious cause of death in people with diabetes. Gunryeong-tang (GRT, 君苓湯) is a traditional oriental herbal formula for the treatment of acute and chronic nephritis, which is used to promote water retention and reduce swelling. However, no study has been conducted on the cardioprotective effects of GRT in diabetes, so this study was investigated whether GRT alleviated diabetes and diabetic heart injury in db/db mice. The experiment was conducted for 8 weeks, distributed into four different groups: db/m control, db/db control, db/db treated with vildagliptin (50 mg/kg/day) or db/db treated with GRT (200 mg/kg/day). As a result, GRT has an impact in lowering high blood glucose levels and insulin resistance in db/db mice. GRT significantly improved cardiac function in db/db mice by inhibiting LDH, CK-MB, and CPK. After 8 weeks of GRT-treatment, M-mode echocardiography was performed to confirm whether GRT had effect on cardiac function. GRT significantly up-regulated impaired LV EF and FS in db/db mice. In addition, GRT was also confirmed to improve histopathological changes (hypertrophy, fibrosis and inflammation) and protein expression levels of related factors caused by diabetes. Furthermore, GRT remarkably improved the expression of factors involved in cardiac apoptosis in db/db mice. Taken together, our results suggest that GRT improves cardiac function and diabetic complications through suppression of cardiac fibrosis and inflammation. Therefore, it is believed that GRT can be developed as a new treatment for diabetes, especially heart complications. This study was supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Korean government (MSIP) (2017R1A5A2015805) (2021R1C1C2009542). This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.