Plant Compound Leonurine Eases Alcohol-Linked Liver Inflammation In Mice

Researchers studied alcoholic hepatitis, a liver disease driven by long-term heavy drinking that can progress from fatty liver to scarring and cirrhosis. Using alcohol-exposed C57BL/6 mice and a lab-dish model of liver immune cells called Kupffer cells, stimulated with inflammatory triggers, the team treated both with leonurine, a natural alkaloid derived from the herb Leonurus japonicus. Sample size was not reported in the abstract, and dose was not reported. Leonurine treatment reduced liver inflammation and lowered levels of a protein called PKM2 in both the mice and the lab-dish cells, along with the sugar-burning process these cells ramp up called glycolysis. Treated mice also showed less of the cell swelling, described as vacuolar degeneration, and less fat-droplet buildup typical of early alcoholic liver damage.

The authors report that leonurine interacted directly with PKM2 to change how it manages glycolysis, and they link that shift to the drop in liver inflammation seen in the treated mice. The authors conclude that lowering PKM2 may be an effective strategy for treating alcoholic hepatitis, based on this combined mouse and cell-dish evidence.