Abstract
Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is an immense health issue that causes serious complications in aging males including BPH. Icariin (ICA) is a flavonol glycoside that exerts a plethora of pharmacological effects. The present investigation tested the potential of ICA to ameliorate benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) induced by MetS in rats. Animals were allocated to 5 groups in which the first and second groups were kept on water and regular food pellets. MetS was induced in the third, fourth, and fifth groups by keeping the animals on high fructose and salt diets for twelve consecutive weeks. These groups were given vehicle, ICA (25 mg/kg), and ICA (50 mg/kg), respectively. MetS was confirmed by an increase in rats’ weight, accumulation of visceral fat, insulin resistance, and dyslipidemia. This was accompanied by manifestation of BPH including increased prostate weight, prostate index, and histopathological alterations. Treating the animals with both doses of ICA significantly ameliorated the increase in weight and index of the prostate as well as altered prostate histopathology. In addition, ICA significantly decreased cyclin D1 expression, upregulated Bax, and downregulated Bcl2 mRNA expression. ICA prevented lipid peroxidation, reduced glutathione depletion, and catalase exhaustion, which further lowered markers of prostate inflammation such as interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor-α. Moreover, ICA prevented the decrease in prostate content of phosphorylated 5′-adenosine monophosphate (AMP)-activated protein kinase (pAMPK). In conclusion, ICA protects against MetS-induced BPH. This is due to its antiproliferative, proapoptotic, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory activities as well as the activation of AMPK.
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Acknowledgements
The study was funded by the Deanship of Scientific Research in King Saud University through the initiative of DSR Graduate Students Research Support (GSR). We would like to thank Dr. Gamal S Abd El-Aziz, Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, King Abdulaziz University, for assistance in histological studies.
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The study was funded by the Deanship of Scientific Research in King Saud University through the initiative of DSR Graduate Students Research Support (GSR).
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Conceptualization: Abeer Aljehani, and Mohammed Nasrullah: performing experimental part and data collection. Thikryat Neamatallah and Basma. Eid: supervision of experiments, statistical analysis and writing first draft. Nawal Albadr and Ashraf Abdel-Naim: designing the set of experiments and revising the manuscript.
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All animal handling procedures were approved and supervised by the Research Ethics Committee, the Faculty of Pharmacy, King Abdulaziz University (Ref. PH-114-40).
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Aljehani, A.A., Albadr, N.A., Nasrullah, M.Z. et al. Icariin ameliorates metabolic syndrome-induced benign prostatic hyperplasia in rats. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 20370–20378 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-17245-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-17245-4