Liangxue Guyuan decoction alleviates radiation enteritis through PI3K/AKT pathway in rats

Background: liangxue guyuan decoction (lgd) has been used to alleviate symptoms of radiation enteritis (re) in the clinic. this study aimed to investigate the effects and anti-apoptosis and proliferative mechanisms of lgd in rats with re. materials and methods: a total of 115 male sprague dawley rats were used. the control group consisted of 15 rats, and the remaining 100 rats were irradiated with ^60co γ rays at a dose of 11 gy and randomly divided into four groups of 25 each: the model group, the dexamethasone (dxm) group, the low-dose lgd (lgdl) group, and the highdose lgd (lgdh) group. the treatment was administered intragastrically for 7 days, and the number of rats that died was recorded daily. on days 3 and 7 after irradiation, five rats were randomly chosen and sacrificed from each group, and ileum samples were taken for pathological observation, immunofluorescence staining, western blotting, and pcr experiments. results: compared with the model group, the mean survival time, villus length (v), and the ratio of v to crypt depth c (v/c), the number of ki67- positive cells was increased, and the number of tunel-positive cells was reduced in the lgdh group. in addition, lgdh showed some effects on upregulating p-pi3k, p-akt, and bcl-2 and downregulating caspase-3 and bax. the effect of lgd was better than that of dxm. conclusions: lgdh prolonged the survival time of irradiated rats, inhibited intestinal epithelial cell apoptosis, and promoted intestinal repair. this mechanism may be related to the regulation of the pi3k/akt pathway.