Investigation of anti-oxidative stress in vitro and water apparent diffusion coefficient in MRI on rat after spinal cord injury in vivo with Tithonia diversifolia ethanolic extracts treatment.

Background: Spinal cord injury (SCI)-induced secondary oxidative stress associates with a clinical complication and high mortality. Treatments to improve the neurological outcome of secondary injury are considered as important issues. The objective of the current study is to evaluate the anti-oxidative effect of Tithonia diversifolia ethanolic extracts (TDE) on cells and apply the pharmacological effect to SCI model using a MRI imaging algorism.

Methods: The anti-oxidation properties were tested in a 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging assay. Rat liver cells (clone-9) were treated with various doses of TDE (0 ~ 50 μg/ml) before exposed to 250 μM H2O2 and cell survival was determined by MTT and LDH assays. We performed water apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) map in MR techniques to investigate the efficacy of TDE treatment on SCI animal model. We performed T5 laminectomy and compression (50 g, 1 min) to induce SCI. PHILIP 3.0 T MRI was used to image 24 male Sprague-Dawley rats weighing 280-320 g. Rats were randomly divided into three groups: sham group, SCI group, SCI treated with TDE group. The MRI images were taken and ADC were acquired before and after of treatment of TDE (50 mg/kg B. W. orally, 5 days) in SCI model.

Results: TDE protected clone-9 cells against H2O2-induced toxicity through DPPH scavenging mechanism. In addition, SCI induced the increase in ADC after 6 hours. TDE treatment slightly decreased the ADC level after 1-week SCI compared with control animals.

Conclusion: Our studies have proved that the cytoprotection effect of TDE, at least in part, is through scavenging ROS to eliminate intracellular oxidative stress and highlight a potential therapeutic consideration of TDE in alternative and complementary medicine.