Jeon, Sung-Bai; Kim, Ee-Hwa; Nam, Chang-Gyu

This study was undertaken to define the effect of ChungSangSaWhaTang on the norepinephrine-induced arterial contraction and the mechanism of ChungSangSaWhaTang-induced relaxation. In order to investigate the effect of ChungSangSaWhaTang on contracted rabbit carotid arterial strips, transverse strips with intact or damaged endothelium were used for the experiment using organ bath. To analyze the mechanism of ChungSangSaWhaTang-induced relaxation, ChungSangSaWhaTang extract infused into contracted arterial strips induced by norepinephrine after treatment of indomethacin, -nitro-L-arginine, or tetraethylammonium chloride. ChungSangSaWhaTang relax arterial strip with endothelium contracted by norepinephrine, but in the strips without endothelium, ChungSangSaWhaTang-induced relaxation was significantly inhibited. The endothelium-dependent relaxation induced by ChungSangSaWhaTang was decreased by the pretreatment of -nitro-L-arginine, but it was not observed in the strips pretreated with indomethacin or tetraethylammonium chloride. We suggest that ChungSangSaWhaTang may inhibit agonist-induced contraction through the formation of nitric oxide in the vascular endothelial cells.

ChungSangSaWhaTang; Nitric Oxide; Endothelium; Arterial Relaxation

This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.