Comparative study on the anti-inflammatory and immune suppressive effect of Wilforlide A

Tripterygium Glycosides (TG) is effective in the treatment of patients with a variety of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, especially rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in clinical. Wilforlide A (T-1) serves as a quality control standard of TG that be listed in Drug Standard of Ministry of Public Health of the People's Republic of China. The pharmacologic actions of T-1 remain to be unidentified. In this paper, we studied the anti-inflammatory and immune suppressive effect of T-1, and compared it with Triptolide (TP), which believed to be the major active component of TG. Carrageenan-induced rat pedal swelling, tampon-induced rat granulation, and mice ear inhibition rate of swelling trail results show that high-dose T-1 has obvious anti-inflammatory effect. Colorimetric detection contents of hemolysin, carbon elimination from plasma of mice, mice delayed hypersensitivity immune, and organ index were measured. The results show that T-1 has no significant immune suppressive activity, and there has a significant difference with TP and TG. Therefore, we think the content of TP also should be controlled as a supplement standard in order to ensure safe and effective medication. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.