Abstract
Liver fibrosis is a significant health problem which represents the liver's scarring process and response to injury through deposition of collagen and extracellular matrix, and ultimately leads to cirrhosis. Resveratrol is a naturally occurring phytoalexin found predominantly in grapes. This study aimed to investigate the antifibrotic role of resveratrol on dimethylnitrosamine (DMN)-induced liver fibrosis in rats. Rats were divided into four groups and treated for three weeks; control, resveratrol administered orally (20 mg/kg daily), DMN intraperitoneally injected (10 mg/kg 3 days/week), and the last group was pre-treated daily with resveratrol then injected with DMN, 3 days/week. DMN administration induced severe liver pathological alterations. However, oral administration of resveratrol before DMN significantly prevented the induced loss in body weight, as well as the increase in liver weight which arise from DMN administration. Resveratrol has also inhibited the elevation of serum aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and bilirubin levels. Furthermore, resveratrol significantly increased hepatic reduced glutathione (GSH) levels and reduced the levels of malondialdehyde (MDA) due to its antioxidants effect as well as increased serum protein levels. In addition, DMN induced elevation in hydroxyproline content. On the other hand, hydroxyproline level was significantly reduced in the resveratrol pretreated rats. Resveratrol has also remarkably maintained the normal liver lobular architecture. Moreover, resveratrol had displayed potent potentials to prevent collagen deposition, lymphocytic infiltration, necrosis, steatosis, vascular damage, blood hypertention, cholangiocyte proliferation. It can be concluded that resveratrol has a marked protective role on DMN-induced liver fibrosis in rats, and can be considered as antiproliferative, antihypertensive, as well as antifibrotic agent and may be used to block the development of liver fibrosis.