Paeoniflorin attenuates depressive behaviors in systemic lupus erythematosus. - GreenMedInfo Summary

The present study was to evaluate the effects of paeoniflorin (PA) on systemic lupus erythematosus induced depressive behaviors. 10 wild type mice and 20 MRL/lpr mice were applied for the research. The animals were randomly assigned to wild type, MRL/lpr group and MRL/lpr + PA group. PA restored depressive-like behaviors, such as sucrose consumption, immobile time in the tail suspension tests (TST) and forced swimming tests (FST). PA significantly decreased the levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), IL-1β, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) in serum and hippocampus ofMRL/lpr mice. Western blot results demonstrated PA inhibited the levels of HMGB1/TLR4/NF-κB pathway. The findings showed that PA was beneficial for the prevention of systemic lupus erythematosus induced depressive behaviors, which possibly by suppressing HMGB1/TLR4/NF-κB pathway.