Acute gastric ulcer is caused by the unbalance between cell proliferation and apoptosis in gastric mucosa. Platycodin D (PD) has been reported to have a variety of pharmacological properties, including antioxidant and antiin-flammatory effect. In the present study, we investigated the protective effect of PD on the basis of cell proliferation/apoptosis and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) expression in the acute gastric ulcer induced by ibuprofen in Rats. Acute gastric damage was induced by the repeated treatment of ibuprofen (200 mg/kg) with 8 hrs interval in a day. PD was orally administrated at concentrations of 2.5 and 5 mg/kg every day for 5 days before the induction of acute gastric ulcer. Macroscopically, ibuprofen caused a significant increase in the number of lesions in the gastric mucosa. But pretreatment of PD significantly reduced ibuprofen-induced gastric lesion score and prevented excessive mucus depletion in gastric mucosa. Also, pretreatment of PD counteracted significantly Ki-67 decrease in the proliferating zone of gastric glandular portion and highly reduced or delayed apoptotic cells on TUNEL assay. In addition, COX-2 expression was increased in gastric mucosa bearing erosions or ulcers but pretreatment of PD reduced COX-2 expression in gastric lesions. These results show that pretreatment of PD has a protective effect against ibuprofen-induced gastric damage, not only by counteracting a decrease of cell proliferation, but also by inhibiting or delaying apoptosis via regulation of COX-2 within the gastric mucosa.