Plumbagin protects rat cortical neurons from mechanical trauma injury-induced apoptosis by inhibiting NOX4/ROS/p38 MAPK pathway.

Objective: . Materials and Methods: , and then, randomly divided into control group，trauma group，trauma+GKT137831 (50 μM) group，trauma+PLB (5 μM) group, trauma+PLB (10 μM) group and trauma+PLB (20 μM) group．The influence of PLB on rat primary cortical neuron viability and morphology was evaluated after mechanical injury. Flow cytometry was applied to examine neuron apoptotic rate and intracellular production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) after the pretreatment of PLB. The expression of NOX4/p38 MAPK pathway-related proteins was determined by Western blotting. Results: Our results indicated that PLB pretreatment significantly alleviated trauma induced-neuronal injury by restoring cell viability and reducing lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) leakage compared with the trauma group (p