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Hepatoprotective effects of sericin on aging-induced liver damage in mice

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Abstract

Aging is a physiological process in which there is a progressive decline of function in multiple organs such as the liver. The development of natural therapies, such as sericin, for delaying age-associated diseases is of major interest in this regard. Twenty-seven mice were divided into three groups of nine, including young control group (8 weeks, received normal saline), aged control group (24 months, received normal saline), and sericin-treated aged mice (24 months, received sericin at dose 100 mg/kg/day) via oral administration for 14 days. The liver enzymes in serum and oxidative stress markers in liver tissue were evaluated using spectrophotometric/ELISA methods. Apoptotic proteins, pro-inflammatory cytokines, COX2, JNK, and P-38 levels were assessed by western blot analysis. β-galactosidase expression was determined by a qRT-PCR method. The findings showed that 100 mg/kg of sericin reduced liver enzymes in aged mice. Antioxidant capacity in treated aged mice showed an improvement in all indexes in the liver tissue. Also, sericin administration declined pro-inflammatory markers to varying degrees in aged-treated mice. Sericin also increased the expression level of Bcl-2 and decreased the expression level of Bax and cleaved caspase-3.In addition, treatment with sericin suppressed protein expression of p-JNK and p-JNK/JNK. Collectively, these findings would infer that sericin administration may have a hepatoprotective effect in aging-induced liver damage in mice.

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The data sets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

The financial sponsorship of this work was provided by the Molecular Medicine Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran (Pazhoohan ID., 65705; ethical code No., IR.TBZMED.VCR.REC.1399.334).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neurosciences Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran

    Yasin Bagheri, Saeed Sadigh-Eteghad & Javad Mahmoudi

  2. Department of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

    Ezzatollah Fathi

  3. Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

    Abdollah Abdollahpour, Nasim Jalili Namini, Zahra Malekinejad, Kiarash Mokhtari & Alireza Barati

  4. Molecular Medicine Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran

    Soheila Montazersaheb

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  1. Yasin Bagheri
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Contributions

BY and S-SE conceptualized and designed the experiment. BY and MJ conducted experiments. BY, AA, JN-N, MZ, and MK contributed new reagents and analyzed data. MS, S-SE, and FE supervised the project. MS, S-SE, and FE wrote, reviewed, and edited the manuscript. All listed authors have read and approved the final manuscript. The authors declare that all data were generated in-house and that no paper mill was used.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Soheila Montazersaheb.

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This ethical code of this project is IR.TBZMED.VCR.REC.1399.334.

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Bagheri, Y., Sadigh-Eteghad, S., Fathi, E. et al. Hepatoprotective effects of sericin on aging-induced liver damage in mice. Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Arch Pharmacol 394, 2441–2450 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00210-021-02160-9

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