Objective: To investigate the mechanism of Emodin on the role of acute rejection in rat liver transplantation.
Method: Forty-eight pairs of orthotopic liver transplantation model were established with inbred rats which were randomly divided into 3 groups: Control group (BN --> BN), acute rejection group (Lewis --> BN) and emodin group (Lewis --> BN). Six recipients in each group were randomly collected and contents of TNF-alpha and IL-10 in the peripheral blood were detected with ELISA on Day 1, 3, 5 and 7 separately after transplantation and histopathological evaluation was made to detect the differences among groups after the livers were taken out on day 7. The other 10 in each group were protected to evaluate the animation and life time.
Result: The average meso-life time in emodin group (25.6 days) is significantly longer (P < 0.05) than acute rejection group (10.9 days). Compared with the acute rejection group, Emodin group shows up less rejection in the histopathological evaluation (P < 0.01), less TNF-alpha (P < 0.05) and a significant up-regulation of IL-10 in the peripheral blood (P < 0.05 after day 3).
Conclusion: Emodin can inhibit the acute rejection of liver transplantation in rats model effectively and it may play the role with reduction of TNF-alpha and upregulation of IL-10.