Shea butter is traditionally used in Africa for its anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects. In this study we explored the anti-inflammatory activities of the methanolic extract of shea butter (SBE) using lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced murine macrophage cell line J774. It was observed that SBE significantly reduced the levels of LPS-induced nitric oxide, Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukins, 1β (IL-1β), and -12 (IL-12) in the culture supernatants in a dose dependent manner. Expression of pro-inflammatory enzymes, inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) were also inhibited by SBE. These anti-inflammatory effects were due to an inhibitory action of SBE on LPS-induced iNOS, COX-2, TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-12 mRNA expressions. Moreover, SBE efficiently suppressed IκBα phosphorylation and NF-κB nuclear translocation induced by LPS. These findings explain the molecular bases of shea butter’s bioactivity against various inflammatory conditions and substantiate it as a latent source of novel therapeutic agents.
Journal of Complementary and Integrative Medicine
Editor-in-Chief: Lui, Edmund
Ed. by Ko, Robert / Leung, Kelvin Sze-Yin / Saunders, Paul / Suntres, PH. D., Zacharias
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CiteScore 2017: 1.41
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Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Shea Butter through Inhibition of Inos, Cox-2, and Cytokines via the Nf-Kb Pathway in Lps-Activated J774 Macrophage Cells
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Get Access to Full TextKeywords: inducible nitric oxide synthase; cyclooxygenase-2; pro-inflammatory cytokines; nuclear factor-kappa B
About the article
Published Online: 2012-01-12
Citation Information: Journal of Complementary and Integrative Medicine, Volume 9, Issue 1, Pages 1–11, ISSN (Online) 1553-3840, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/1553-3840.1574.
©2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston.Citing Articles
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Comments (1)
this is very interesting paper.
posted by: swapnil goyal on 2012-02-24 09:32 AM (Europe/Berlin)