Abstract: OBJECTIVE:To investigate the kidney protective effects of lycium barbarum polysaccharide (LBP) in alcohol-induced liver injury in mice.METHODS:60 male mice were randomly divided into five groups,control,model and treatment with different concentrations of LBP (75,150,300 mg/kg) groups.Alcoholic liver injury model was induced by 50% ethanol for 7 days.At 16 h after the last treatment,serum and kidney samples were obtained for the determination of biochemical markers.The concentrations of GLU,BUN and CREA in serum were determined by automatic biochemical analyzer,and the levels of superoxide dismutase (SOD),glutathione (GSH),malondialdehyde (MDA) and inflammatory factor TNF-α,IL-1β in kidneys were measured by commercial kits.RESULTS:Compared with the control group,the weights of mice in the model group were decreased significantly (P < 0.01) but,the kidney indexes were increased significantly (P < 0.01),indicating that alcohol caused organ damage in mice.Compared with the model group,the average weight of middle dose group was increased significantly (P < 0.05),and the kidney indexes for the three dose groups were decreased significantly (P < 0.05).The contents of GLU in the medium and high dose groups (7.63、7.82 mmol/L) were decreased significantly (P < 0.05).In addition,the contents of BUN and CREA in high dose group were significantly decreased (P < 0.05),the activities of SOD and contents of GSH were increased significantly (P < 0.01),and the contents of MDA were decreased significantly (P < 0.05) in all of treatment groups.The contents of TNF-α were reduced significantly (P < 0.05),the contents of IL-1β were reduced significantly (P < 0.05) only in high dose group compared with model group.CONCLUSION:Our study demonstrates that lycium barbarum polysaccharide have kidney protective effect on alcohol-induced alcoholic liver injury.

Key words: lycium barbarum polysaccharide, alcoholic injury, kidney, protective effect