International Journal of Medical Laboratory

Background and Aims: Plants as medicines have always played a vital role in human life. Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF)-α is one of the macrophage-derived inflammatory cytokine with pleotropic effects in the inflammation process. Some studies have been demonstrated that some of the Echinops species have anti-inflammatory activity. In fact, Echinops lasilepis is introduced as one of the native plants of Yazd. Thus, the present study intended to assess the inflammatory activity of Echinops lasiolepis on TNF-α secretion in J774 A.1 mouse macrophages.

Materials and Methods: At first, methanol extract was prepared by maceration. 105 cells/ well were seeded in 96-well plate in triplicate and were treated with different concentrations of extract and 100 ng/ml Lipopolysaccharides. MTT cytotoxicity assay was used to determine the cell viability. Concentrations of extract with cell viability of more than 90% were used to evaluate the level of TNF-α in the macrophage culture using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.

Results: Viability of cells at different extract concentrations of 0.1, 1, 10, 50, 100 and 200 µg/ml were 91.68, 95.27, 94.2, 90.8, 85.38 and 71.38, respectively. Therefore, cells treated with 50 μg/ml and lower concentrates of extracts showed more than 90% of viability and their supernatants were used for TNF-α assay. The study results revealed that all concentrations of extract reduced the production of TNF-α.

Conclusions: Our findings showed that methanol extract of Echinops lasiolepis may have anti-inflammatory activity via reducing TNF-α production.