[Impact of Jinhong Tablet on thymus of rats with cholangitis].

OBJECTIVE To study the changes of the center of cellular immune thymus and the interference of Jinhong Tablet, a compound traditional Chinese herbal medicine, during the course of cholangitis. METHODS Twenty-four male Wistar rats were randomly divided into three groups. Ligation group, simple ligation of bile duct without producing infection and fed with normal saline; untreated group, reproduce acute cholangitis and fed with normal saline; Jinhong Tablet-treated group, reproduce cholangitis and treated with Jinhong Tablet. Five days after modeling, the rats were sacrificed and the thymus were sampled to observe the morphological changes with an electronic microscope, count the index of thymus and apoptosis and assay the expressions of Bcl-2 gene coding protein and Fas gene coding protein. RESULTS The frequency of apoptosis of thymus in the untreated group was higher than that in the Jinhong Tablet-treated group and the ligation group, and the frequency of apoptosis of thymus in the Jinhong Tablet-treated group was higher than that in the ligation group. Compared with the Jinhong Tablet-treated group and the ligation group, the weight and index of thymus were lower and the index of apoptosis of thymus was higher significantly in the untreated group (P<0.01). The expression of Bcl-2 gene coding protein in the ligation group and the Jinhong Tablet-treated group were much higher than that in the untreated group (P<0.01), but there were no significant differences of the expression of Fas gene coding protein among the three groups. CONCLUSION There exists a promotion of non-physiological apoptosis of cellular immune center such as decrease of the weight and the index of thymus and increase of the index of apoptosis of thymus during acute cholangitis, which may be inhibited by up-regulation of Bcl-2 gene coding protein with antipyretic and purgative herbs Jinhong Tablet.