Research progress in use of traditional Chinese medicine monomer for treatment of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Abstract

With the improvement of people's living standards and the change of eating habits, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has gradually become one of the most common chronic liver diseases in the world. However, there are no effective drugs for the treatment of NAFLD. Therefore, it is urgent to find safe, efficient, and economical anti-NAFLD drugs. Compared with western medicines that possess fast lipid-lowering effect, traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) have attracted increasing attention for the treatment of NAFLD due to their unique advantages such as multi-targets and multi-channel mechanisms of action. TCM monomers have been proved to treat NAFLD through regulating various pathways, including inflammation, lipid production, insulin sensitivity, mitochondrial dysfunction, autophagy, and intestinal microbiota. In particular, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor α (PPAR-α), sterol regulatory element-binding protein 1c (SREBP-1c), nuclear transcription factor kappa (NF-κB), phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K), sirtuin1 (SIRT1), AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), p53 and nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) are considered as important molecular targets for ameliorating NAFLD by TCM monomers. Therefore, by searching PubMed, Web of Science and SciFinder databases, this paper updates and summarizes the experimental and clinical evidence of TCM monomers for the treatment of NAFLD in the past six years (2015-2020), thus providing thoughts and prospects for further exploring the pathogenesis of NAFLD and TCM monomer therapies.

• Authors: Honglin Zhou, Cheng Ma, Cheng Wang, Lihong Gong, Yafang Zhang, Yunxia Li
• Journal: European journal of pharmacology (Eur J Pharmacol) Vol. 898 Pg. 173976 (May 05 2021) ISSN: 1879-0712 [Electronic] Netherlands
• PMID: 33639194 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Review)
• Copyright: Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Chemical References

• Drugs, Chinese Herbal

Topics

• Animals
• Biomedical Research
• Drugs, Chinese Herbal (adverse effects, therapeutic use)
• Humans
• Liver (drug effects, metabolism, pathology)
• Medicine, Chinese Traditional
• Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (drug therapy, metabolism, pathology)
• Signal Transduction