The purpose of this study evaluated the immunoregulatory effect of phellinus linteus ethanol (PLE) extracts on liver damage on carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) induced in rats. Four-week old Male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into the three experimental groups randomly; Control group, CCl4 group, CCl4 + PLE group. We found that effect of PLE on IFN-γ, STAT1 and pSTAT1 was decrease in vivo. Several genes were demonstrated to be IL-4 inducible prior to the discovery of STAT6. IL-4, STAT6 and pSTAT6 decreased significantly lower in CCl4 + PLE than the CCl4 group. Our data indicated that cytokine protein production were increased in CCl4 group with CCl4 + PLE group. In our data indicate that IgA levels in MLN lymphocytes were low, while IgE was high in CCl4 + PLE group compared with CCl4 group. Therefore, the results of this study show that PLE can be proposed to protect the liver against CCl4-induced immunoregulatory activity in rats.

The present study describes the preliminary evaluation of the anti-inflammatory activities of Phellinus linteus (PL) and Phellinus linteus Grow in Germinated Brown Rice (BRPL). In order to effectively screen for anti-inflammatory agents, we first examined the extracts' inhibitory effects on the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines activated with lipopolysaccharide. Moreover, we examined the inhibitory effects of the PL and BRPL extracts on pro-inflammatory factors such as NO, iNOS, TNF-α and IFN-γ in murine macrophage RAW 264.7 cells. NO production and iNOS expression was significantly augmented in LPS treated cell, the production of NO and iNOS was greater in the BRPL than in the PL group. In addition, protein and mRNA levels of TNF-α and IFN-γ in BRPL showed relatively more potent pro-inflammatory-activity inhibition compared to that of PL. These results suggest that BRPL may have significant effects on inflammatory factors, and may be a potential anti-inflammatory therapeutic materials.

To search for immunoactive natural products exerting anti-inflammatory activity, we have evaluated the effects on the water extracts of Artemisia princeps Pampanini (APP) on lipopolysaccharide-induced nitric oxide (NO), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) production by RAW 264.7 macrophage cell line. Our data indicate that this extract is a potent inhibitor of NO production and it also significantly decreased PGE2 and TNF-α production. Consistent with these results, the protein and mRNA expression level of inducible NO synthase (iNOS) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) was inhibited by water extracts of APP in a dose-dependent manner. These results suggest that APP may exert anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects possibly by suppressing the inducible NO synthase and COX-2 expressions.