Objective To investigate the impacts of cytokines （interleukin-4，IL-4；tumor necrosis factor-α，TNF-α） and medications of bronchial asthma （dexamethasone，aminophylline，salbutamol） on the activity of histamine N-methyltransferase（HMT） in tracheal epithelial cells.Methods BEAS-2B bronchial epithelial cells were cultured and treated with different concentration of TNF-α, IL-4, dexamethasone, salbutamol and aminophylline respectively. The activity of HMT in BEAS-2B cells was determined by high performance liquid chromatography.Results The activity of HMT in tracheal epithelial cells was (50±7) pmol?min-1?mg pro-1.TNF-α and IL-4 lowered the activity of HMT significantly at the concentration equal to or higher than 1 ng/mL and 5 ng/mL respectively，and reached the maximum inhibitory effect at the level of 10 ng/mL.Dexamethasone and aminophylline could ameliorate distinctly the inhibitory effect of TNF-α on the activity of HMT, while salbutamol had no significant inhibitory effect.Conclusions TNF-α and IL-4 exert the lowering effect on the activity of HMT，which would be one important cause of airway hyperreactivity.Glucocorticoids and theophyllines are administered to treat asthma partly due to its relieving mechanism of TNF-α negative effects on HMT.
ObjectiveTo systematically review the effects of aminophylline combined with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the treatment of asthma. MethodsDatabases including The Cochrane Library(Issue 1, 2015), PubMed, EMbase, CNKI, VIP and WanFang Data databases were electronically searched from January 2005 to December 2014 to collect randomized controlled trials (RCTs) about the treatment of bronchial asthma combining aminophylline with TCM. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies. Then, meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 software. ResultsA total of 10 RCTs involving 820 participants were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that: The total clinical effective rate in the aminophylline plus TCM group was higher than that of the aminophylline alone group (RR=1.22, 95%CI 1.11 to 1.33). The FEV1 in the aminophylline plus TCM group was also higher than that of the aminophylline alone group (MD=0.53, 95%CI 0.33 to 0.73). ConclusionCurrent evidence shows, the total clinical effective rate of aminophylline combined with TCM for asthma is better than that of aminophylline alone, and its mechanism may be related to the improvement of FEV1. Due to the limited quantity and quality of included studies, the above conclusion needs to be further verified by more high quality studies.