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To elucidate the increasing dissolution and enhancement mechanism of wine-processed Radix Scutellaria (RS) by fractal theory in nitroglycerin (NTG)-induced migraine rats. We prepared three RS from the process with 10% (S1), 15% (S2), 20% (S3) (v/m) rice wine. Mercury intrusion porosimetry and scanning electron microscope were employed to explore the internal structure of RS and the components dissolution of RS was analyzed by HPLC. Rats were randomly allocated into following groups and orally given different solutions for 10 days: normal group (NOR, normal saline), model group (MOD, normal saline), Tianshu capsule group (TSC, 0.425 mg/kg), ibuprofen group (IBU, 0.0821 mg/kg), crude RS group (CRU, 1.04 mg/kg) and wine-processed RS group (WP, 1.04 mg/kg) followed by bolus subcutaneously injection of NTG (10 mg/kg) to induce migraine model except NOR. Biochemical indexes (nitric oxide-NO, calcitonin-gene-related peptide-CGRP, and endothelin-ET) and c-fos positive cells were measured with commercial kits and immunohistochemical method, separately. Total surface area significantly increased in wine-processed RS ( p < 0.05) while fractal dimension markedly decreased ( p < 0.05) compared with crude RS. Additionally, S3 owned the highest increase of dissolution including the percentage increase of total extract, total flavonoids and main compounds (all p < 0.05 vs S1 and S2). Pharmacodynamic data showed c-fos positive cells significantly decreased ( p < 0.05) in WP compared with MOD and the level of NO, CGRP, ET in WP was better than that of CRU. Wine-processed RS could be a promising candidate medicine for migraine treatment due to its increased component dissolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic and systemic autoimmune disease, which affects approximately 1% adult population in the worldwide. Aim The present study was to investigate the anti-arthritic effect of berberine and its involved mechanism in Freund’s complete adjuvant (FCA) induced arthritis rats. Methods and materials Rats were divided randomly into control, FCA, tripterysium glycosides, berberine (75 and 150 mg/kg). The apparent indicators, including changes of body weights, paw swelling degrees and arthritis indexes, were analyzed to evaluate anti-arthritic effect of berberine. The levels of IL-6, IL-10, IL-17 and TGF-β in serum were measured by ELISA. Histopathological changes and immunohistochemical expression of anti-IL-10 and anti-IL-17 antibodies in ankle joint tissues were examined. Results Berberine obviously suppressed the severity of RA rats by attenuating the apparent indicators as mentioned above. Meanwhile, berberine significantly decreased the levels of IL-6 and IL-17, and increased the levels of IL-10 and TGF-β. Histopathological examinations indicated that berberine attenuated the synovial hyperplasia and inflammatory cell infiltration in joint tissues. In addition, immunohistochemical results showed that the amount of anti-IL-10 antibody increased, while the amount of anti-IL-17 antibody decreased in ankle tissues of arthritis rats. Conclusions Our results showed that berberine exerted a superior anti-arthritic effect and the mechanism maybe involve the balance between Treg and Th17 cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]