SMAD3 and Hepatic fibrosis: According to Kanzler et al. [47] and Chen et al. [71], the observed suppression in TGF-β1 protein expression and the subsequent downregulation of SMAD3 in the livers of group 3 could explain the observed reduction of α-SMA-positive cells (Figure 4(c)), collagen deposition (Figure 3(c)), and fibrosis % (Figure 3(e)) and the reduced fibrosis scores (Table 5) in this group in comparison with the liver fibrosis control group.