Bai-Hu-Tang (BHT) has been broadly applied on treating the early stage of acute infection with systemic inflammation for 2 thousands years in Chinese medicine. We aimed to explore whether BHT is beneficial in treating sepsis and its effects on pro-inflammatory cytokine, interleukin (IL)-6, and anti-inflammatory cytokine, IL-10, which both play important roles in progress of sepsis.
Thirty-six male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomized into six groups and cecal ligation and puncture (CLP) was performed in all except for the sham-control group. Rats in CLP+BHT-L6 and CLP+BHT-H6 groups receiv- ed a low dose (0.45 g/kg) and a high dose (0.9 g/kg) of BHT, respectively, 6 hrs postoperatively. CLP+BHT-L12 and CLP+BHT-H12 groups received a low and a high dose of BHT, respectively, 12 hrs post- operatively. Sham- control and sepsis-control groups received distilled water (1mL) as vehicle 6 hrs postoperatively. Serial blood samples were drawn before operation, as baseline, and at 4, 8, and 12 hrs postoperatively for IL-6 and IL-10 assay. All rats were monitored for 3 days for survival study.
Baseline IL-6 and IL-10 were similar in all groups. Rats in the CLP+BHT-H6 group had significantly higher survival rate (80%) and signi- ficantly lower levels of both IL-6 and IL-10 at 12 hrs postoperatively than those in the sepsis-control group. Cox proportional hazards models were used to evaluate the cause and effect between different doses of BHT and survival. Before adjustment, univariate Cox proportional hazards model revealed early administration of high dose BHT was associated with signi- ficantly decreased risk of death (hazard ratio: 0.08, p = 0.025). After adding changes of IL-6 and IL-10 into the model, change of IL-6 was the only pre- dictor for survival indicating that early administration of high dose BHT improved survival by reducing IL-6 level.
The results suggested the ancient formula BHT may be a promising complementary therapy for sepsis.
