The hepatocyte-protective effect of luteolin was investigated in this study. Human cancer cells HepG2 were used as the liver model and H2O2 was taken as the source of oxidative damage. The experiment was divided into five groups as follows: blank group, damaged group, the protective group with low concentration of luteolin (0.5 μM+300 μM H2O2), the protective group with medium concentration of luteolin (5 μM+300 μM H2O2) and the protective group with high concentration of luteolin (10 μM+300 μM H2O2). Cell viability, reactive oxygen species (ROS) growth rate, cell cycle and apoptosis, as well as lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) activities were measured. With the protection of luteolin, the cell viability of 10 μM luteolin-protective group reached 84%, and the enzyme activities of LDH, SOD and CAT were significantly lower than those of the damaged group (p<0.05). The increase rate of ROS had no significant differences with the blank group (p>0.05). The results of flow cytometer showed that apoptotic rate decreased in dose-dependent with the increase concentration of luteolin, but there was no significant difference on the cell cycle between the damaged group and the luteolin-protective group (p>0.05). Our study demonstrated that luteolin had a good hepatocyte-protective effect and had the potential for application in food, nutraceuticals and cosmetics industry.
