Astragaloside IV extends lifespan of Caenorhabditis elegans by improving age-related functional declines and triggering anti-oxidant responses.

Astragaloside IV (AS-IV) is a representative component of astragaloside saponins in dried roots of Astragali Radix. Astragaloside possesses a broad spectrum of pharmacological activities, including antibacterial, anti-fibrosis, anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects. However, the role of AS-IV on anti-aging remains unclear. In this paper, we studied the function of AS-IV on anti-aging using Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) model. We showed that AS-IV can prolong the lifespan of C. elegans in a natural aging model, a paraquat injury model and a heat stress model and improve movement capacity of nematodes. 1H-NMR data indicate an improvement of glutamate content and decrease in glucose in the AS-IV treatment group compared to the control. Further investigation revealed that AS-IV can induce the mRNA expressions of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) genes and increase the activities of SOD and CAT in the nematode. Interestingly, AS-IV could not extend the lifespan of sod-1, sod-2, sod-3, sod-4, sod-5, ctl-1, ctl-2, ctl-3 and daf-16 mutants. These data indicate that AS-IV prevents aging via mainly improving age-related functional declines, the antioxidant capacity of nematodes and partially modulating the IIS pathway activity. Our results provide new insights into how AS-IV prevents and treats aging.