OBJECTIVETo investigate the effect and mechanism of Yangxincao Capsule (YXCC) in regulating lipids.

METHODSSixty rats were randomly divided into 6 groups, the normal control group (A), the hyperlipidemia model group (B), the high, middle and low dose YXCC treated groups (C, D and E), and the Shanzhajing (SZJ) treated group (F) for positive medicine control. Except for the rats in the normal control group, the other 50 were daily fed with fatty emulsion for 10 days to establish hyperlipidemic model. From the I th day on, in the same time of continually feeding with fatty emulsion they were administered with water, high (1.08 g/kg), middle (0.54 g/kg), low dose (0.27 g/kg) of YXCC and SZJ (5.4 mg/kg) respectively for 10 days, while to rats in Group A equal volume of water was given. At the 21th day, after rats were fasted for 16 h, their blood was extracted from post-orbital vein to detect the level of serum lipids, lipoprotein, apolipoprotein (apo) and lipid metabolic enzyme.

RESULTSCompared with Group A, the levels of serum total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG) and low density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) increased remarkably, and the level of high density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C) dropped obviously in Group B. While in the four treated groups the levels of TC, TG and LDL-C were significantly reduced, HDL-C and its sub-components 2 and 3 (HDL2-C and HDL3-C), as well as the ratio of HDL-C/TC were raised. Besides, the content of apo-Al was increased and apo-B was decreased significantly in Group C and D, activity of lecithin cholesterol acyltransferase (LCAT) and lipoprotein lipase (LPL) increased in the three YXCC treated groups, all showed statistical significance (P < 0.05 or P < 0.01) as compared with those in Group B.

CONCLUSIONYXCC could remarkably modulate the lipid metabolic disorder in hyperlipidemic rats, and has a certain bi-directional regulating function on lipoprotein, inferring that it could reduce the risk of occurring coronary artery diseases. The mechanism of regulating lipid metabolism might be related with the increasing activity of LCAT, LPL and eliminating of cholesterol by the elevated level of HDL2-C.