Glycyrrhizin administration ameliorates Streptococcus aureus-induced acute lung injury

Streptococcus minus (S. aureus)-induced acute lung injury (ALI) has a high incidence of mortality clinically. Glycyrrhizin (GL) is a traditional Chinese medicine for anti-inflammatory. However, the role of GL in S. aureus-induced ALI has not previously been elucidated. GL (25 mg/kg i.p.) administration exerts potent anti-inflammatory effect in this model. GL administration significantly alleviated inflammation via reduction of multiple cytokines (serum and lung tissue IL-6, TNF-alpha, IL-8, IL-1 beta and HMGB1) and immune cells (lung tissue neutrophil and macrophage infiltration). Additionally, we measured the signaling pathways (NF-kB and MARKS) and inflammasome dependent pyroptosis. The results suggest that GL inhibits NF-kB, p38/ERK pathways and pyroptosis. Furthermore, we used different inhibitors to treat infected-A549 cells and found that BMS-582949 (a p38 inhibitor) is the most effective inhibitor for inhibiting pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-6, TNF-alpha and IL-1 beta) production, which suggests that p38 signaling pathway might be the main pathway for S. aureus-induced inflammation. Collectively, the data demonstrates that GL could mitigate inflammation after S. aureus infection.