Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 28, 2017; 23(24): 4369-4380
Published online Jun 28, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i24.4369
Intestinal anti-inflammatory activity of Ground Cherry (Physalis angulata L.) standardized CO2 phytopharmaceutical preparation
Luiz Domingues Almeida Junior, Ana Elisa Valencise Quaglio, Celso Acácio Rodrigues de Almeida Costa, Luiz Claudio Di Stasi
Luiz Domingues Almeida Junior, Ana Elisa Valencise Quaglio, Celso Acácio Rodrigues de Almeida Costa, Luiz Claudio Di Stasi, Laboratory of Phytomedicines, Pharmacology and Biotechnology (PhytoPharmaTech), Department of Pharmacology, Institute of Biosciences, Universidade Estadual Paulista UNESP, Botucatu, São Paulo, CEP 18618-970, Brazil
Author contributions: This paper was part of the Master research of Almeida Junior LD, who drafted the manuscript, was responsible for animal care and management, and supervised and accompanied all of the experiments; Quaglio AEV contributed to performing the appropriate statistical assessments and supervised the molecular analyses; de Almeida Costa CAR accompanied the experiments and contributed to the revision of the manuscript; Di Stasi LC is the senior author and designed the experiments, contributed to the drafting of the manuscript, supervised the entire work and gave final approval of the manuscript.
Supported by São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), No. 11/50512-2 and No. 15/15267-8; Fellowships: Almeida-Junior from Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Brazilian Ministry of Education); Costa from São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP); and Quaglio and Di Stasi from National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq - Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology).
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: Approved by the Ethical Committee for Animal Research (Protocol number 042/04-CEEA), Institute of Biosciences, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP).
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Luiz Claudio Di Stasi, Professor, Laboratory of Phytomedicines, Pharmacology and Biotechnology (PhytoPharmaTech), Department of Pharmacology, Institute of Biosciences, Universidade Estadual Paulista UNESP, Botucatu, São Paulo, CEP 18618-970, Brazil. ldistasi@ibb.unesp.br
Telephone: +55-14-38800216 Fax: +55-14-38113744
Received: December 13, 2016
Peer-review started: December 14, 2016
First decision: February 9, 2017
Revised: February 25, 2017
Accepted: April 12, 2017
Article in press: April 12, 2017
Published online: June 28, 2017
Processing time: 195 Days and 4.2 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: We report, at the first time, the protective effects of a supercritical CO2 plant extract from aerial parts of Ground Cherry (Physalis angulata L.) in a model of intestinal inflammation induced by trinitrobenzenesulphonic acid in rats. The effects were related to presence of plant steroids, compounds chemically related to glucocorticoids, reference drugs used to treat human inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The intestinal anti-inflammatory activity of Physalis angulata plant extract was related to its capacity to modulate oxidative stress, immune response and gene expression of inflammatory mediators. This way, the standardized plant extract of Ground Cherry enriched with phytosterols has potential for use to treat IBD.