Experimental study on tetrandrine treating pulmonary interstitial fibrosis induced by bleomycin in rats

Objective To observe the curative effect of the calcium antagonist (both traditional Chinese medicine and western medicine) on pulmonary fibrosis.Methods Seventy-two SD rats were replicated into pulmonary fibrosis models by intratracheal injection in a single of bleomycin A 5 and were divided into 4 groups randomly.Then,normal saline ig in untreated model group (n=24),tetrandrine ig in tetradrine group(n=24) , verapamil ig in verapamil group (n=24) and control group (n=15) were performed until the end of experimental . The hydroxy prolines (HP) and lipid peroxides(LP) contents in lung tissues and the histopathologic changes of the lung of the rats in each group were assayed on the 7th, 14th, and 28th day after the injection, and the lung coefficients of the rats of each group on the 28th day were compared between groups.Results The HP and LP contents in tetrandrine group and verapamil group were obviously lower than those of model group at all phases (p0.05 or p0.01),and so were the lung coefficients of the two group (p0.001 or p0.01).The degree of alveolitis and fibrosis of the lung studied by histopathology in the two groups was lower than that in the model group,and the tetrandrine was superior to verapamil. Conclusions The tetrandrine has satisfactory curative effect on pulmonary fibrosis and it is worth research further.