Actovegin Restore The Digestive Tract In Rats With Acute Radiation Enteritis

Objective: To evaluate the effect of actovegin, which is a protein-freehemodialysate got out from calf serum, on the digestive tract in rats with acute radiation enteritis, and approach the correlated mechanisms.Methods: The whole abdominal radiation was performed on Wistar rats. Atotal of 48 male rats were recruited into this double-blind randomized controlled study and were randomly divided into five groups. Group 1 was the normal group without irradiation and was injected with NS (normal sodium) only; group 2 was the control group and was injected with NS after exposure to X-rays of single dose of 9 Gy; group 3, group 4 and group 5 was separately treated with 10%, 20% and 30% actovegin after exposure to X-rays of single dose of 9 Gy. All rats were injected with NS or actovegin twice a day. The rats were dissected at 5 days. The morphologic indices were measured by using the light microscopy and the image analysis system. The intestinal NO concentration was detected by the nitric acid reductase, and the bacterial translocation was also examined. The expression of bax and bcl-2 protein was determined by immunohistochemistry.Results: Final data were obtained from all the rats randomly assigned into fivegroups. Data were cutoff at 5 days, and results were analyzed by intention to treat. After 5 days, in group 2(control) two rats were dead, others underwent severe diarrhea, hematochezia and depression; In group 4 (20% actovegin injected) nine rats showed almost complete normal state, only one rat experienced diarrhea and depression; Rats in group 5 (30% actovegin injected)showed the same with group 4;Rats in group 3 (10% actovegin injected) experienced the similar syndromes like those in group 2,such as diarrhea, hematochezia and so on, without showing significant effect. Analysis suggested that application of 20% and 30% actovegin caused more injuries to heal and increased the rate of survival compared with the group 2 and group 3.The group 4 and group 5 had a significantly higher levels of the height of villus, the depth of crypt, the thickness of the mucosa and entire wall, the number of metaphase mitoses per crypt and had a significantly lower level of the bacterial translocation and the NO concentration compared with the control group. Application of 20% and 30% actovegin also clearly upregulated the expression of bcl-2 and downregulated the expression of bax. The dose sensitivity observed in our study is in accordance with the promotion of intestinal mucosa repair and reports of a dose-dependent effect of actovegin on the formation of mucosal tissue.Conclusions: Our data support that actovegin accelerate the recovery of theinjured digestive mucosal epithelium, as well decrease the bacterial translocation, which are possibly associated with decreasing the intestinal NO concentration and regulating the expression of apoptosis protein such as bax and bcl-2.Actovegin is better for keeping the normal structure and function of the digestive mucosa.