Effects of cardiotonic pill on RBC rheologic abnormalities in HFD-induced mice and LPL deficient mice

The lipoprotein lipase deficient (LPL-/-) mice and high fat-diet (HFD) induced hypertriglyceridemic mice were used to investigate the effects of cardiotonic pill (CP) on RBC rheologic abnormalities. Mice were randomly divided into the following five groups: the control group; the untreated HFD group; the untreated LPL-/- group; the treated HFD group; and the treated LPL-/- group, and the treated HFD and LPL-/- mice were administered with CP twice a day (400 mg/kg/day) orally for four weeks. Then, plasma triglyceride (TG), RBC deformation index (DI), orientation index (DI)or and RBC electrophoretic time (EPT) were measured. Compared with the untreated HFD mice, TG level and EPT reduced and DI and (DI)or increased markedly in the treated HFD mice (P<0.05). However, compared with the untreated LPL-/- mice, these parameters in the treated LPL-/- mice had no statistically significant changes (P>0.05). Our data show that CP can lower plasma TG level and ameliorate RBC rheologic abnormalities in the HFD-induced hypertriglyceridemic mice, but it losses its capacity in the LPL deficient animals. The results indicate that LPL may be one of the important targets for CP regulating lipometabolism and rheologic abnormalities.