Qiliqiangxin can significantly reduce the risk of heart failure hospitalization and cardiovascular death composite endpoint, international experts have written attention.

The chymotrypsin pathway may be key to cardiac fibrosis, and inhibition of cardiac chymotrypsin appears to be important for certain cardiac functional properties. Therefore, chronic inhibition of chymotrypsin may be a strategy to prevent cardiac remodeling. Qiliqiangxin significantly down-regulated the expression and activity of myocardial chymotrypsin, while HE and Masson staining showed reduced myocardial injury.

However, chronic Qiliqiangxin treatment had no effect on SHR ACE expression and blood pressure. These beneficial effects are unlikely to be due to differences in the hemodynamic effects of ACE/ chymotrypsin inhibition, as Qiliqiangxin treatment does not affect arterial blood pressure and heart rate in SHR. These results confirm and extend our understanding of the effects of Qiliqiangxin on RAS and raise the intriguing possibility that Qili Qiangxin Capsules may mitigate myocardial damage in SHR.

The authors thank Yiling Pharmaceutical Co., LTD. (Shijiazhuang, China) for providing the original ultra-fine powder of the drug Qiliqiangxin. The authors thank Medjaden Biosciences Ltd. for their assistance in the preparation of this manuscript. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Research Fund for Overseas Students of Heilongjiang Province.