Anti-Inflammatory And Immunoregulatory Effects Of Paeonol: Its Cellular And Molecular Mechanisms

In the recent 20 years, hundreds of Chinese traditional and herbal medicines with immunomodulatory properties have been found. Their active components drew great attention worldwide. Paeonol(Pae), a compound extracted from both antirheumatic herbs Paeonia suffruiticosa and Cynanchum panicula -tum, has been found to possess various bioactivities, such as antiinflamm-ation,antiallergy, immunomodulation, etc. In this paper, a series of experiments both in vivo and in vitro systems as well as at molecular levels have been immunopharmacologically performed to investigate the mechanisms of paeonol's anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic effects.The main results are as follows:1. Effect of Pae on T lymphocytes In vitro and in vivo.In vitro, Pae (50-200μg/ml) inhibited ConA-induced proliferations of splenocytes from both BALB/c and C₅₇BL mice. On the contrary, Pae stimulated the proliferation at a lower concentration (3.125 μg/ml). Similarly,Pae also suppressed the proliferation of human tonsillar mononuclear cells (hTMNC) stimulated with PHA. In addition, Pae (3.125 μg/ml) obviously stimulated the proliferation of murine splenocytes activated with rIL-2 but inhibited the proliferation at higher concentration (200μg/ml), it also inhibited the proliferation induced with PMA and/or A23187 only at higher concentrations. Moreover, Pae markedly weakened two-way or one-way mixed lymphocyte reaction of allogenic splenocytes at concentrations ranging from 100 to 200 μg/ml. Furthermore, Pae (50-100μg/ml) pronouncedly affected T subpopu lation ratio in hTMNC, increasing the number of CD4^-CD8⁺, CD4^-CD8^-cells and decreasing the number of CD4⁺CD8⁺, CD4⁺CD8^- cells.