In vitro immunosuppressive and cytotoxic activities of Tripterygium wilfordii extract

Tripterygium wilfordii Hook. f. (TW) is a traditional herbal medicine which has been widely used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. However, adverse reactions of TW such as hepatotoxicity and nephrotoxicity have been frequently reported in clinic. With the aim to evaluate the potency and toxicity of TW, we collected eleven batches of TW from different localities across Chinese mainland, and investigated the inhibition of their methanol extracts on the proliferation of mouse spleen lymphocytes, normal human hepatocyte (L-02) cells and African green monkey kidney (COS-7) cells. TW extracts with three different concentrations were designed as the experimental groups. Our present findings provided consistent evidence that TW had significant concentration-dependent inhibitory action on lymphocytes, L-02 and COS-7 cells. At the concentrations of 0.75 and 1.5?mg/mL, most TW groups showed statistically significant inhibition of lymphocyte proliferation when compared with the control group (p?p?>?0.05). In most test groups, significant toxicities were shown on L-02 cells at 0.6 and 3.0?mg/mL (p?p?