Regulation of Glucolipid Metabolism in Mice Using Dendrobium huoshanense Extract and PI3k/Akt Signaling Pathway Activation

Abstract

The present research is carried out to study the hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic effects of the Dendrobium huoshanense C. Z. Tang et S. J. Cheng extract on type 2 diabetic mice. D. huoshanense extract was prepared using the condensation reflux method. The chemical components were separated by UPLC Triple-TOF MS/MS to further identify the components that mainly exerted hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic effects. Type 2 diabetic C57BL/6 mice were induced by a high-fat diet (HFD) followed by intraperitoneal streptozotocin (STZ) and were daily gavaged with different doses of D. huoshanense extract for 5 weeks. Various methods such as HE staining, ELISA, and Western blot were used to evaluate the hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic effects of D. huoshanense extract on mice with type 2 diabetes mellitus model. The experimental results revealed that the main compounds of D. huoshanense extract were polysaccharides, flavonoids, alkaloids, amino acids, and many other chemical components. Oral administration of 200 mg/kg of the extract of D. huoshanense significantly reduced blood glucose and insulin levels of high-dose group mice and lowered total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels, but increased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels and liver glycogen content. In addition, the protein expression levels of insulin receptor (Ins R), phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3K) and p-protein kinase B (Akt) were upregulated. These results imply that the D. huoshanense aqueous extract can improve insulin resistance and lipid metabolism in type 2 diabetic mice, and it may regulate the function through the PI3K/AKT pathway.