Table 3.

The Role of Astragalus in Alleviating Liver and Lung Injury

Disease	Administration and Dose	Experimental Models	Efficacy	Mechanism	Reference
Drug-induced liver injury	Mongolian astragalus polysaccharide 100 mg/kg for 14 d	Drug-induced liver injury induced by overdose of APAP intraperitoneal injection	Mongolian Astragalus polysaccharides can alleviate APAP-induced drug-induced liver injury	Nrf-2 and LC3Nrf-2, Keap-1 and their downstream target genes↑ MAPK, TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-1β↓	[37]
Liver damage	Astragalus injection 2 g/mL for 7 d	Adult healthy male Wistar rats	Relieves hepatocyte apoptosis and has a hepatoprotective effect	Bcl-2, Bcl-2/Bax↑	[85]
Liver damage	AS-IV 20 and 40 mg/kg for 1 week	ICR clean-grade mice treated with AS-IV	AS-IV can significantly reduce the expression of inflammatory factors in mice with paracetamol-induced liver injury, and can play a certain therapeutic role in liver injury	TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6↓	[86]
Liver damage	AS-IV 80 mg/kg for 8 weeks	With AS-IV 80 mg/kg) and Metformin, Met; 120 mg/kg) separately treated in T2DMSD rats	AS-IV has a certain protective effect on liver injury in T2DM	Liver index, serum HOMA-IR, serum TNF-α, IL-6 levels↓ AMPK/mTOR pathway↑	[87]
Oxidative damage to hepatic stellate cells	100 and 200 μmol/L AS-IV for 36 h	Hepatic stellate cells	Astragaloside pretreatment attenuates oxidative damage to rat hepatic stellate cells	Cell viability↑ Apoptotic cells, intracellular Caspase-3 and Caspase-9 expression levels, ROS levels↓	[88]
Acute liver injury	Astragalus extract 350 mg/kg for 12 h	Normal mice were treated with Astragalus extract and modeled 3 days after prophylactic administration of Astragalus extract	Astragalus extract has anti-APAP acute liver injury effects	Apoptosis-related genes MAPK14, CAT, ALT, AST↓	[89]
Liver fibrosis and liver injury	Astragalus wt> 99.5%) Compound soft-shelled turtle soft liver tablets, 9 weeks	Healthy mice were injected subcutaneously with corn oil solution containing 20% CCl4 at a dose of 6 mL/kg twice a week to establish a rat model of liver fibrosis injury	Astragalus has an effective protective effect on liver injury in experimental liver fibrosis rats through the p38MAPK signaling pathway	The expression of ALT, AST and TBIL, p38MAPK, MKK3 and ATF-2 proteins in serum↓	[90]