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Review
. 2024 Jul 23:15:1399598.
doi: 10.3389/fphar.2024.1399598. eCollection 2024.

Hepatic microcirculatory disturbance in liver diseases: intervention with traditional Chinese medicine

Pei Liu #  1   2 , Wan-Li Liang #  1   2 , Rui-Ting Huang #  1   2 , Xin-Xing Chen  2 , De-Hua Zou  1   2 , Hiroshi Kurihara  2 , Yi-Fang Li  2 , You-Hua Xu  1 , Shu-Hua Ouyang  2 , Rong-Rong He  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Hepatic microcirculatory disturbance in liver diseases: intervention with traditional Chinese medicine

Pei Liu et al. Front Pharmacol. .

Abstract

The liver, a complex parenchymal organ, possesses a distinctive microcirculatory system crucial for its physiological functions. An intricate interplay exists between hepatic microcirculatory disturbance and the manifestation of pathological features in diverse liver diseases. This review updates the main characteristics of hepatic microcirculatory disturbance, including hepatic sinusoidal capillarization, narrowing of sinusoidal space, portal hypertension, and pathological angiogenesis, as well as their formation mechanisms. It also summarized the detection methods for hepatic microcirculation. Simultaneously, we have also reviewed the characteristics of microcirculatory disturbance in diverse liver diseases such as acute liver failure, hepatic ischemia-reperfusion injury, viral hepatitis, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, hepatic fibrosis, hepatic cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Finally, this review also summarizes the advancement in hepatic microcirculation attributed to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and its active metabolites, providing novel insights into the application of TCM in treating liver diseases.

Keywords: active metabolite; hepatic microcirculatory disturbance; liver disease; pathogenesis; traditional Chinese medicine.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Structures and characteristics of normal hepatic microcirculation and hepatic microcirculatory disturbance. (A) Schematic diagram of the liver composed of hepatic lobules. (B) Normal hepatic sinusoidal microcirculation. (C) characteristics of hepatic microcirculatory disturbance. (1) Hepatic sinusoidal capillarization, (2) narrowing of sinusoidal space, (3) portal hypertension, and (4) pathological angiogenesis. This figure is created with biorender.com.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Microcirculatory disturbance in liver diseases. (A) Shows microcirculatory disturbance in acute liver failure; (B) Shows microcirculatory disturbance in hepatic ischemia-reperfusion injury; (C) Shows microcirculatory disturbance in viral hepatitis, (D) Shows microcirculatory disturbance in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease; (E) Shows microcirculatory disturbance in alcoholic liver injury; (F) Shows microcirculatory disturbance in hepatic fibrosis and cirrhosis, and (G) Represents microcirculatory disturbance in hepatocellular carcinoma. This figure is created with biorender.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
The molecular structure of metabolites with activity to improve hepatic microcirculatory disturbance. The numbers within parentheses correspond to the numbers in the main text and table. These chemical structures were plotted using ChemBioDraw Ultra 14.0.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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