| Summary: | Introduction: According to previous reports, hypertension has become the most common chronic disease in the world. Captopril, an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor, has been widely used for the therapy of arterial hypertension and cardiovascular diseases therapy. Besides, Shunaoxin pill (SNX) as a traditional Chinese prescription showed antihypertensive effect in our previous research. Objective: This study means to investigate whether SNX combining with captopril could show antihypertensive and renal protective effects on spontaneous hypertension rats (SHRs). Methods: SHRs were randomly assigned to four treatment groups, including non-treated group, captopril, SNX, and captopril + SNX-treated groups. Their body weight and systolic blood pressure (SBP) were measured weekly. Histopathological examination was analyzed through Masson staining and hematoxylin and eosin staining. Biochemical analyses, ELISA, and western blot were used to analyze their combining mechanism. Results: In this experiment, this combinatorial therapy significantly reduced aortic wall thickness, increased the content of NO, NOS and eNOS, decreased the content of bradykinin and endothelin 1(ET-1), and regulated the levels of TG, TC and HDLC back to normal, which suggested they could induce vasodilation and lower blood pressure. Meanwhile, histological examination alleviated that captopril + SNX remarkably inhibited renal injury, including tubular disorder, inflammatory cell infiltration and fibrosis. They down-regulated the serum levels of BUN and Cr, protein expression of IL-1β, NF-κB, Bax, Cyt c, caspase 3, 8 and 9 in kidney tissues and significantly increased the levels of Bcl-2 in kidney tissues compared with monotherapy group. Conclusion: The combinatorial treatment of SNX and captopril lowered blood pressure through adjusting NO/NOS, ET-1 and dyslipidemia profile. Furthermore, this treatment alleviated the kidney damage via reducing the release of inflammatory factors and the expression of apoptotic markers. Therefore, these results provided a rationale for future clinical use of SNX combined with captopril in antihypertensive and protecting renal functions in hypertension.
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