Abstract
Endothelial dysfunction is the key player in the development and progression of vascular events. Oxidative stress is involved in endothelial injury. Rosmarinic acid (RA) is a natural polyphenol with antioxidative, antiapoptotic, and anti-inflammatory properties. The present study investigates the protective effect of RA on endothelial dysfunction induced by hydrogen peroxide (H(2)O(2)). Compared with endothelium-denuded aortic rings, the endothelium significantly alleviated the decrease of vasoconstrictive reactivity to PE and KCl induced by H(2)O(2). H(2)O(2) pretreatment significantly injured the vasodilative reactivity to ACh in endothelium-intact aortic rings in a concentration-dependent manner. RA individual pretreatment had no obvious effect on the vasoconstrictive reaction to PE and KCl, while its cotreatment obviously mitigated the endothelium-dependent relaxation impairments and the oxidative stress induced by H(2)O(2). The RA cotreatment reversed the downregulation of AMPK and eNOS phosphorylation induced by H(2)O(2) in HAEC cells. The pretreatment with the inhibitors of AMPK (compound C) and eNOS (L-NAME) wiped off RA's beneficial effects. All these results demonstrated that RA attenuated the endothelial dysfunction induced by oxidative stress by activating the AMPK/eNOS pathway.