Research Article Berberine Attenuates Myocardial Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury by Reducing Oxidative Stress and Inflammation Response: Role

Copyright © 2016 Liming Yu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Berberine (BBR) exerts potential protective effect against myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (MI/R) injury. Activation of silent information regulator 1 (SIRT1) signaling attenuates MI/R injury by reducing oxidative damage and inflammation response. This study investigated the antioxidative and anti-inflammatory effects of BBR treatment in MI/R condition and elucidated its potential mechanisms. Sprague-Dawley rats were treated with BBR in the absence or presence of the SIRT1 inhibitor sirtinol (Stnl) and then subjected to MI/R injury. BBR conferred cardioprotective effects by improving postischemic cardiac function, decreasing infarct size, reducing apoptotic index, diminishing serum creatine kinase and lactate dehydrogenase levels, upregulating SIRT1, Bcl-2 expressions, and downregulating Bax and caspase-3 expressions. Stnl attenuated these effects by inhibiting SIRT1 signaling. BBR treatment also reduced myocardium superoxide generation, gp91phox expression, malondialdehyde (MDA) level, and cardiac inflammatory markers and increased myocardium superoxide dismutase (SOD) level. However, these effects were also inhibited b