Intraperitoneal Administration of Honey Elicit Robust Luminescence Signals from Myeloperoxidase Activation.

Rao V. L. Papineni* and Sean Orton. Carestream Health Inc.

E-Mail: rao.papineni1@carestreamhealth.com

Honey is being used in traditional medicine from ancient times, and shown to provide anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti- ulcer, and anti-tumoral effects. Intraperitoneal administration of honey acts as an anti-adhesive agent preventing postoperative intraabdominal adhesion formation in a rabbit model. It is unclear if the anti-adhesive property of honey is resultant of inflammatory of anti-inflammatory response. Here, we determined the downstream events of intraperitoneally administered honey to evaluate a role of honey in early immune response. Cellular Myeloperoxidase(MPO) is an inflammatory heme protein present in myeloid cells- neutrophils, and macrophages. We determined myeloperoxidase activity in vivo using luminescence approach with luminol (5-amino-2,3-dihydro-1,4-phthalazine-dione) as a substrate. Luminol a redox-sensitive compound emits blue luminescence upon exposure to oxidizing agents, and in vivo, it has been established to have unique specificity for MPO activity resultant of myeloid cell activation. We monitored real-time in vivo MPO activity in response to intraperitoneal administration of honey 0.1 ml (50% volume/volume dilution with PBS) in athymic nude mice. Non invasive luminescence and X-ray images were obtained at different time points after administration of honey. Significant enhancement in MPO activity was observed within 3 hrs of administration of a single dose of honey (i.p injection). Overlay of luminescence images obtained at multiple angles with their respective planar x-ray images show robust polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) activation at different lymph nodes (figure attached). Further studies using animal models (diseased) are needed to evaluate if the curative properties of these therapeutic compounds require the involvement of such early inflammation responses. Such an immune responsive component of therapeutic drugs can be classified as therapeutic inflammation. These real-time MPO activity monitoring methodologies therefore will provide valuable information necessary for evaluation of therapeutic compounds and in development of better drug treatments.
"Molecular Imaging - Wisdom to See For Maladies to Flee" Dr. Rao V. L. Papineni