6.4 Hepatoprotective effects of hydrogen sulfide
Ischemic liver tissue is extremely susceptible to more severe liver dysfunction and failure after reperfusion occurs[157, 158]. More seriously, hepatic ischemia-reperfusion(HIR) can also affect the success of liver resection or transplantation and increase the risk of death for the operator[157, 159]. The risk of death is increased. There is a lot of experimental data to demonstrate that H2S can effectively protect liver tissue in hepatic I/R injury and is expected to be a new way to reduce the morbidity and mortality of hepatic I/R injury complications[160-162]. Some experiments have shown that the expression levels of endogenous H2S and CSE are elevated in the tissues of HIR rats, and the researchers speculate that this may be due to the self-protective response of the organism induced by HIR. Meanwhile, after using the exogenous H2S donor NaHS in HIR rats, the investigators found that NaHS could attenuate I/R-induced liver injury[160, 163] At present, there has been a large amount of data demonstrating that H2S can play a role in reducing liver injury through various mechanisms, such as inhibition of oxidative stress, anti-apoptosis, anti-inflammation, protection of mitochondrial function and regulation of autophagy[164-169]. However, it has also been found that endogenous H2S may exacerbate HIR-induced liver injury in the context of insulin resistance, so H2S should be used with caution in this situation[170].