Objective: This study aims to explore the effects of the traditional Chinese medicine monomer cryptotanshinone (CTS) on the expression levels of inflammatory factors in myocardial cells caused by Ang II and its mechanism.
Methods: The neonatal rat myocardial cells were cultured in vitro in this study. Their purities were identified by immunocytochemical method. The cellular viability in different groups was determined by MTT assay. The levels of TNF-α and IL-6 in the supernatant of cell culture were detected with ELISA method. The levels of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) were detected by Dihydrogen ethidium (DHE) staining method. The location changes of NF-κB in cells were detected by immunofluorescence method.
Results: The purity of primary cultured neonatal rat myocardial cells was over 95%, CTS had no obvious effect on the viability of cells while it inhibited the increased levels of TNF-α, IL-6 and ROS caused by Ang II with dose dependent. NF-κB mainly distributed in the cytoplasmic region in normal cells, it translocated to the nucleus after Ang II stimulation while CTS inhibited the translocation.
Conclusions: CTS could inhibit the inflammatory factors such as TNF-α and IL-6 in myocardial cells induced by Ang II with dose dependent, its mechanism may be related with that CTS could decrease the levels of ROS in myocardial cells and inhibit NF-κB translocation into the nucleus.
Keywords: Ang II; Cryptotanshinone (CTS); IL-6; NF-κB; TNF-α.