Pharmacological Study on Activity of Silymarin and/or Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles against Hepatic Dysfunction Using Cell Line HepG2

Abstract

Introduction: The liver is the primary organ for metabolism. The increase of use in nanoparticles nowadays is scary to such an important organ unless it is fully investigated. Therefore, our aim is evaluating the hepatoprotective effect of silymarin in alone and in combination with zinc oxide nanoparticles Zno NPs against hepatic dysfunction induced by methotrexate (MTX) on human liver cells (HepG2). Methotrexate is an anti-metabolite that is used in treating autoimmune illness and cancer but it induces liver toxicity so that its application is limited. Methods and Results: In our study, we investigated the hepatoprotective effect of Zno NPs, and silymarin against HepG2 cells induced by (MTX). Doses were determined according to determination of the IC50 for each compound, dose of induction used was 75 μg/ml of methotrexate. Results showed that Zno NPs with silymarin exert a distinct effect on cells viability by causing a great hepatoprotection for Hep G cells. We used different doses for both silymarin and Zno NPs. Doses used for silymarin were (100, 75 and 50 μg/ml), and doses of Zno NPs were (20, 10 and 5 μg/ml), but actually the most hepatoprotective doses exerted by Zno NPs and silymarin were 10 and 50 μg/ml which achieved about 97% cell viability. Conclusion: Overall, our data demonstrated that Zno NPs in combination with silymarin cause a hepatoprotection for Hep G2 cells pretreated with methotrexate to cause liver cytotoxicity. This study provides guidance for development of treatment of liver dysfunction using this combination of Zno NPs and silymarin. in addition, this study suggests that further investigation required for better understanding of nanoparticles use