THE PROTECTIVE EFFECT OF GOMISIN A ON EXPERIMENTALLY INDUCED ACUTE HEPATIC INJURY

We have previously shown that acute hepatic failure is easily induced in animals by the intravenous injection of heat-killed Propionibacterium acnes and lipopolysaccharide endotoxin at a week's interval. And hepatocytotoxic factor(s) produced by the fully activated liver adherent cells might involve these liver injuries. Gomisin A a lignan component from Shizondra chinensis, blocked the induction of such severe liver damages. In this report, we tried to clarify the mechanism by which this medicine protected the mice from being suffered of liver injuries. We examined in vitro the effect of gomisin A both on hepatocytotoxic activity of liver adherent cells and on liver parenchymal cells. Firstly, gomisin A suppressed releasing of cytotoxic factor from the activated liver adherent cells. Secondly, it also could keep liver parenchymal cell membrane stable even in the presence of cytotoxic substances. These results suggested that gomisin A might inhibit the induction of acute hepatic failure in our system, partialy because of blocking release of hepatocytotoxic factor and of stabilizing membrane of liver parenchymal cells.