Abstract
Cardiovascular disease is the highest cause of death, and atherosclerosis (AS) is the primary pathogenesis of many cardiovascular diseases. In this study, we aim to investigate the possible pharmaceutical effects of Dendrobium huoshanense C. Z. Tang et S. J. Cheng polysaccharide (DHP) in AS. We fed zebrafish with high-cholesterol diet (HCD) to establish a zebrafish AS model and treated with DHP and observed plaque formation and neutrophil counts under a fluorescence microscope. Next, a parallel flow chamber was utilized to establish low shear stress- (LSS-) induced endothelial cell (EC) dysfunction model. We observed that DHP significantly improved HCD-induced lipid deposition, oxidative stress, and inflammatory response, mainly showing that DHP significantly increased superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, decreased plaque formation, and decreased neutrophil recruitment and the levels of total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), malondialdehyde (MDA), and reactive oxygen species (ROS). Furthermore, DHP significantly improved LSS-induced oxidative stress and EC dysfunction. Our results indicated that DHP can exert treatment effects on AS, which may attribute to its hypolipidemic, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory activities and improving LSS-induced EC dysfunction. DHP has promising potential for further development as a functional natural medicine source targeted at AS prevention.
Highlights
Due to the improvement of living conditions, diseases caused by high-cholesterol diet (HCD) become more and more obvious
The lipid level significantly increased in AS group, which was notably reversed by 1 mg/L and 10 mg/L DHP (Figure 2(a))
We found that low shear stress (LSS) significantly increased the mRNA levels of hypoxia-inducible factor 1α (HIF1α), vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 (VEGFR2), YAP1, and twist-related protein 1 (TWIST1) and DHP significantly decreased the mRNA levels of HIF1α, VEGFR2, YAP1, and TWIST1
Summary
Due to the improvement of living conditions, diseases caused by high-cholesterol diet (HCD) become more and more obvious. AS is known as the deposition of blood components such as lipids in the intima of the arteries, the proliferation of smooth muscle cells, the increase of collagen fibers, and formatting porridge-like lipid-containing necrotic lesions and vascular wall sclerosis [2, 3]. With the gradual increase of incidence, AS is becoming the main cause of coronary heart disease, cerebral infarction, and peripheral vascular disease, which seriously threatens people’s health [4, 5]. HCD raises blood lipid levels, causing lipids to accumulate in blood vessels, forming early AS plaques. AS is a chronic inflammation and autoimmune disease; there is a variety of immune cells involved in the occurrence of AS, such as macrophages, lymphocytes, dendritic cells, and neutrophils
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