Search Results (11)

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) poses considerable toxicological risks due to its association with an increased likelihood of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), and is characterized by hypertension, hyperglycemia, dyslipidemia, and obesity. This study aimed to investigate the therapeutic potential of flavonoid-rich lotus seedpod extract (LSE) in alleviating MetS and MASLD-related hepatic disturbances. In vivo, mice subjected to a high-fat diet (HFD) and streptozotocin (STZ) injection were supplemented with LSE or simvastatin for 6 weeks. Obesity indicators included body weight and epididymal fat, while insulin resistance was measured by fasting serum glucose, serum insulin, homeostasis model assessment–insulin resistance index (HOMA-IR), and oral glucose tolerance (OGTT). Also, the levels of serum lipid profiles and blood pressure were evaluated. Adipokines, proinflammatory cytokines, liver fat droplets, and peri-portal fibrosis were analyzed to clarify the mechanism of MetS. LSE significantly reduced the HFD/STZ-induced MetS markers better than simvastatin, as demonstrated by hypoglycemic, hypolipidemic, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory effects. In vitro, LSE improved oleic acid (OA)-triggered phenotypes of MASLD in hepatocyte HepG2 cells by reducing lipid accumulation and enhancing cell viability. This effect might be mediated through proteins involved in lipogenesis that are downregulated by adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK). In addition, LSE reduced reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation and glycogen levels, as demonstrated by enhancing insulin signaling involving reducing insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS-1) Ser307 phosphorylation and increasing glycogen synthase kinase 3 beta (GSK3β) and protein kinase B (PKB) expression. These benefits were dependent on AMPK activation, as confirmed by the AMPK inhibitor compound C. These results indicate that LSE exhibits protective effects against MetS-caused toxicological disturbances in hepatic carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, potentially contributing to its efficacy in preventing MASLD or MetS. Full article

Lotus seedpod maturity detection and segmentation in pond environments play a significant role in yield prediction and picking pose estimation for lotus seedpods. However, it is a great challenge to accurately detect and segment lotus seedpods due to insignificant phenotypic differences between the adjacent maturity, changing illumination, overlap, and occlusion of lotus seedpods. The existing research pays attention to lotus seedpod detection while ignoring maturity detection and segmentation problems. Therefore, a semantic segmentation dataset of lotus seedpods was created, where a copy-and-paste data augmentation tool was employed to eliminate the class-imbalanced problem and improve model generalization ability. Afterwards, an improved YOLOv8-seg model was proposed to detect and segment the maturity of lotus seedpods. In the model, the convolutional block attention module (CBAM) was embedded in the neck network to extract distinguished features of different maturity stages with negligible computation cost. Wise-Intersection over Union (WIoU) regression loss function was adopted to refine the regression inference bias and improve the bounding box prediction accuracy. The experimental results showed that the proposed YOLOv8-seg model provides an effective method for “ripe” and “overripe” lotus seedpod detection and instance segmentation, where the mean average precision of segmentation mask (${mAP}_{mask}$) reaches 97.4% and 98.6%, respectively. In addition, the improved YOLOv8-seg exhibits high robustness and adaptability to complex illumination in a challenging environment. Comparative experiments were conducted using the proposed YOLOv8-seg and other state-of-the-art instance segmentation methods. The results showed that the improved model is superior to the Mask R-CNN and YOLACT models, with recall, precision, ${mAP}_{box}$ and ${mAP}_{mask}$ being 96.5%, 94.3%, 97.8%, and 98%, respectively. The average running time and weight size of the proposed model are 25.9 ms and 7.4 M, respectively. The proposed model obtained the highest mAP for lotus seedpod maturity detection and segmentation while maintaining an appropriate model size and speed. Furthermore, based on the obtained segmentation model, 3D visualization of the lotus pond scene is performed, and cloud point of lotus seedpods is generated, which provides a theoretical foundation for robot harvesting in the lotus pond. Full article

To explore the feasibility of the mechanochemical-assisted extraction (MCAE) of phenolic compounds from lotus seedpod (Receptaculum Nelumbinis), a single-factor experiment combined with response-surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimize the extraction process. The results showed the optimal extraction conditions as follows: Li₂CO₃ as a solid reagent (25%), an extraction time of 80 min, liquid/solid ratio of 42.8 mL/g, and extraction temperature of 80.7 °C; and the maximum value of total phenolic content (TPC) was 106.15 ± 1.44 gallic acid equivalents (GAE)/g dry weight (DW). Additionally, the 2,2-Diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH), 2,2′-azinobis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS), and ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) were 279.75 ± 18.71, 618.60 ± 2.70, and 634.14 ± 7.17 µmol TE/g, respectively. Ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography combined with triple-time-of-flight mass spectrophotometry (UPLC-Triple-TOF/MS) analysis identified eight phenolic compounds mainly consisting of polyphenols and flavonoids. Moreover, the phenolic compounds showed potent inhibitory effects on both α-amylase and α-glucosidase, with inhibition rates of over 80%. Furthermore, the results showed different degrees of inhibition activity against Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, and Escherichia coli, among which the inhibitory effect on the growth of B. subtilis was the best. This paper shows that the phenolic compounds have good biological activities, which provides a reference for the further exploitation of LSP. Full article

Lotus flower polysaccharide (LFP) and lotus seedpod polysaccharide (LSP) were separated by water extract–alcohol precipitation, and their structures and biological activities were investigated. The results of monosaccharide composition showed that LFP and LSP were composed of nine monosaccharides, fucose, rhamnose, arabinose, glucose, galactose, mannose, fructose, galacturonic acid, and glucuronic acid, with the molar percentages of 0.18: 0.43: 2.26: 45.22: 32.14: 4.28: 8.20: 6.28: 1.01 and 2.70: 1.02: 8.15: 45.63: 20.63: 1.44: 2.59: 16.45. LSP and LFP exhibited molecular weights of 9.37 × 10⁴ Da and 1.24 × 10⁶ Da, respectively. SEM showed that LFP and LSP have similar structures; XRD analysis showed that both polysaccharides had crystalline structure and amorphous structure. The results of ABTS+, DPPH, hydroxyl radical scavenging experiment, and a reducing power experiment showed that LFP and LSP had good antioxidant capacity. Cell viability findings showed that polysaccharide concentrations of lotus flower and lotus seedpod could enhance cellular proliferation ranging from 25 to 400 μg/mL without cytotoxicity. By inducing the production of crucial proteins in the TLR4/NF-κB pathway, LFP and LSP were able to induce autophagy in RAW264.7, according to the results of the RT-PCR and Western blotting assays. Full article

It has been demonstrated that polyphenols have the potential to extend the shelf life of fish products. Thus, the effects of phenolic extracts from grape seed (GSE), lotus seedpod (LSPC), and lotus root (LRPE) were investigated in this study, focusing on the physicochemical changes and bacterial community of refrigerated channel catfish fillets during storage at 4 °C, using ascorbic acid (AA) as reference. As a result, GSE, LSPC, LRPE and AA inhibit the reproduction of microbials in catfish fillets during storage. According to the microbial community analysis, the addition of polyphenols significantly reduced the relative abundance of Proteobacterial in the early stage and changed the distribution of the microbial community in the later stage of storage. After 11 days of storage, the increase in total volatile base nitrogen (TVB-N) in fish was significantly reduced by 25.85%, 25.70%, 22.41%, and 39.31% in the GSE, LSPC, LRPE, and AA groups, respectively, compared to the control group (CK). Moreover, the lipid oxidation of samples was suppressed, in which thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances (TBARS) decreased by 28.77% in the GSE group, compared with the CK. The centrifugal loss, LF-NMR, and MRI results proved that GSE significantly delayed the loss of water and the increase in immobilized water flowability in catfish fillets. The polyphenol-treated samples also showed less decrease in shear force and muscle fiber damage in histology, compared to the CK. Therefore, the dietary polyphenols including GSE, LSPC, and LRPE could be developed as natural antioxidants to protect the quality and to extend the shelf life of freshwater fish. Full article

Cisplatin has been considered a chemotherapeutic drug for treating human tumors, and one of the noteworthy side effects of cisplatin is nephrotoxicity. Amelioration of cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity is necessary. Lotus seedpod extract (LSE) mainly composed of quercetin-3-glucuronide has been revealed for antioxidant and anti-tumor effects. However, the effects of LSE on cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity are still unknown. This study aims to explore the in vitro and in vivo protective effect and possible mechanism of LSE on cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity. Results showed that co-treatment of LSE with cisplatin raised the viability of rat renal tubular epithelial NRK−52E cells and decreased oxidative stress and cell apoptosis when compared to the cells treated with cisplatin alone. The molecular mechanisms analyzed found that LSE could reduce the expressions of apoptotic factors, including Bax, Bad, t-Bid, and caspases. In the in vivo study, LSE improved the cisplatin-induced levels of serum markers of kidney function, glomerular atrophy, and the degree of apoptosis in the kidneys. This is the first study to display that LSE prevents cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity by reducing oxidative stress and apoptosis. Thus, LSE could be a novel and natural chemoprotective agent for cisplatin chemotherapy in the future. Full article

The aim is to investigate the effect of lotus (Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn.) seedpod extract (LSE) on acetaminophen (APAP)-induced hepatotoxicity. LSE is rich in polyphenols and has potent antioxidant capacity. APAP is a commonly used analgesic, while APAP overdose is the main reason for drug toxicity in the liver. Until now, there has been no in vitro test of LSE in drug-induced hepatotoxicity responses. LSEs were used to evaluate the effect on APAP-induced cytotoxicity, ROS level, apoptotic rate, and molecule mechanisms. The co-treatment of APAP and LSEs elevated the survival rate and decreased intracellular ROS levels on HepG2 cells. LSEs treatment could significantly reduce APAP-induced HepG2 apoptosis assessed by DAPI and Annexin V/PI. The further molecule mechanisms indicated that LSEs decreased Fas/FasL binding and reduced Bax and tBid to restore mitochondrial structure and subsequently suppress downstream apoptosis cascade activation. These declines in COX-2, NF-κB, and iNOS levels were observed in co-treatment APAP and LSEs, which indicated that LSEs could ameliorate APAP-induced inflammation. LSE protected APAP-induced apoptosis by preventing extrinsic, intrinsic, and JNK-mediated pathways. In addition, the restoration of mitochondria and inflammatory suppression in LSEs treatments indicated that LSEs could decrease oxidative stress induced by toxic APAP. Therefore, LSE could be a novel therapeutic option for an antidote against overdose of APAP. Full article

Lotus Receptaculum Nelumbinis has been sparking wide research interests due to its rich phenolic compounds. In the present work, ultrasonic-assisted extraction coupled with glycerol was employed to extract phenolic compounds from Receptaculum Nelumbinis and the process was optimized using a response surface methodology with Box-Behnken design (BBD). The optimal conditions for the total phenolic content (TPC) extract were obtained: glycerol concentration of 40%, an extraction temperature of 66 °C, ultrasonic time of 44 min, and the solvent-to-solid ratio of 55 mL/g. Under these optimum extraction conditions, the extraction yield of TPC was 92.84 ± 2.13 mg gallic acid equivalents (GAE) /g. Besides, the antioxidant activities demonstrated the ability of free radical scavenging by four different methods that included 2,2-Diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH), ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP), 2,2′-azinobis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS), and reducing activity (RA) were 459.73 ± 7.07, 529.97 ± 7.30, 907.61 ± 20.28, and 983.66 ± 11.80 μmol TE/g, respectively. Six phenolic compounds were identified by ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography combined with triple-time-of-flight mass spectrophotometry (UPLC-Triple-TOF/MS) from the extracts. Meanwhile, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) was conducted to identify the characteristic functional groups of the extracts and thus reflected the presence of polyphenols and flavonoids. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) illustrated the microstructure difference of four treatments, which might explain the relationships between antioxidant activities and the structures of phenolic compounds. Full article

Melanogenesis has many important physiological functions. However, abnormal melanin production causes various pigmentation disorders. Melanin synthesis is stimulated by α-melanocyte stimulating hormone (α-MSH) and ultraviolet (UV) irradiation. Lotus seedpod extract (LSE) has been reported as possessing antioxidative, anti-aging, and anticancer activities. The present study examined the effect of LSE on melanogenesis and the involved signaling pathways in vitro and in vivo. Results showed that non-cytotoxic doses of LSE and its main component epigallocatechin (EGC) reduced both tyrosinase activity and melanin production in the α-MSH-induced melanoma cells. Western blotting data revealed that LSE and EGC inhibited expressions of tyrosinase and tyrosinase-related protein 1 (TRP-1). Phosphorylation of p38 and protein kinase A (PKA) stimulated by α-MSH was efficiently blocked by LSE treatment. Furthermore, LSE suppressed the nuclear level of cAMP-response element binding protein (CREB) and disturbed the activation of melanocyte inducing transcription factor (MITF) in the α-MSH-stimulated B16F0 cells. The in vivo study revealed that LSE inhibited melanin production in the ear skin of C57BL/6 mice after exposure to UVB. These findings suggested that the anti-melanogenesis of LSE involved both PKA and p38 signaling pathways. LSE is a potent novo natural depigmenting agent for cosmetics or pharmaceutical applications. Full article

Oxidative stress is highly associated with the development of diabetes mellitus (DM), especially pancreatic beta-cell injury. Flavonoids derived from plants have caused important attention in the prevention or treatment of DM. Lotus seedpod belongs to a traditional Chinese herbal medicine and has been indicated to possess antioxidant, anti-age, anti-glycative, and hepatoprotective activities. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the pancreatic beta-cell protective effects of lotus seedpod aqueous extracts (LSE) against oxidative injury. According to HPLC/ESI-MS-MS method, LSE was confirmed to have flavonoids derivatives, especially quercetin-3-glucuronide (Q3G). In vitro, LSE dose-dependently improved the survival and function of rat pancreatic beta-cells (RIN-m5F) from hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂)-mediated loss of cell viability, impairment of insulin secretion, and promotion of oxidative stress. LSE showed potential in decreasing the H₂O₂-induced occurrence of apoptosis. In addition, H₂O₂-triggered acidic vesicular organelle formation and microtubule-associated protein light chain 3 (LC3)-II upregulation, markers of autophagy, were increased by LSE. Molecular data explored that antiapoptotic and autophagic effects of LSE, comparable to that of Q3G, might receptively be mediated via phospho-Bcl-2-associated death promoter (p-Bad)/B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) and class III phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3K)/LC3-II signal pathway. In vivo, LSE improved the DM symptoms and pancreatic cell injury better than metformin, a drug that is routinely prescribed to treat DM. These data implied that LSE induces the autophagic signaling, leading to protect beta-cells from oxidative stress-related apoptosis and injury. Full article

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is closely associated with metabolic disorders, including hepatic lipid accumulation and lipotoxicity. Plant-derived polyphenols have attracted considerable attention in the prevention of NAFLD. Lotus seedpod, rich in polyphenols, is a traditional Chinese herbal medicine. Previous studies have showed that lotus seedpod possess radioprotective, antioxidant, anti-cancer, and anti-inflammatory activities. In this study, the in vitro hepatoprotective effect of lotus seedpod extract (LSE) and its main component epigallocatechin (EGC) was examined. Firstly, oleic acid (OA), an unsaturated fatty acid, was used to induce the phenotype of NAFLD in human hepatocytes, HepG2 cells. LSE dose-dependently improved the OA-induced viability loss of HepG2 cells. Non-cytotoxic concentrations of LSE or EGC abolished intracellular lipid accumulation and oxidative stress in the OA-treated cells. In addition, LSE and EGC showed a minor effect on autophagy, and potential in reducing OA-induced occurrence of apoptosis confirmed by morphological and biochemical features, including an increase in the formation of apoptotic bodies, the exposure of phosphatidylserine, and activation of caspases. Molecular data showed the anti-apoptotic effect of LSE might be mediated via downregulation of the mitochondrial pathway. Our data imply that EGC-enriched LSE potentially could be developed as an anti-NAFLD agent. Full article