Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, Shenzhen People's Hospital, the Second Clinical Medical College of Jinan University, Shenzhen, China.
Department of Immunology and Microbiology, Biological Therapy Institute, Shenzhen University School of Medicine, Shenzhen, China.
Sci Rep. 2017 Sep 14;7(1):11601. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-11397-5.
The objective of this study is to investigate the correlation between IL-37 level and osteoarthritis activity and to determine the anti-inflammatory effects of IL-37 in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and synovial cells (SCs) from osteoarthritis (OA) patients, which including 32 patients with erosive inflammatory OA (EIOA) and 40 patients with primary generalized OA (PGOA), 40 age and sex matched healthy volunteers were recruited as healthy controls (HCs). The protein and relative mRNA levels of IL-37 were significant increased in the blood of EIOA patients compared with those of PGOA patients and HCs. Serum IL-37 levels of OA patients were positively correlated with VAS score, as well as with CRP, ESR in blood. Positive correlations were also observed among IL-37 with IL-1β, TNF-α and IL-6 in synovial cells. Furthermore, the expression of IL-1β, TNF-α and IL-6 in PBMCs and SCs from EIOA patients was suppressed by IL-37 in vitro. In conclusion, our results indicated that IL-37 increased in EIOA patients and was positively correlated with disease activity, the pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-1β, TNF-α and IL-6 in PBMCs and synovial cells from EIOA patients were restrained by recombinant IL-37. Thus, IL-37 may serve as a novel therapeutic target for the treatment of OA inflammation.
本研究旨在探讨 IL-37 水平与骨关节炎（OA）活动之间的相关性，并确定 IL-37 在 OA 患者外周血单个核细胞（PBMCs）和滑膜细胞（SCs）中的抗炎作用，其中包括 32 例侵蚀性炎症性 OA（EIOA）患者和 40 例原发性全身性 OA（PGOA）患者，40 名年龄和性别匹配的健康志愿者被招募为健康对照组（HCs）。EIOA 患者血液中 IL-37 的蛋白和相对 mRNA 水平明显高于 PGOA 患者和 HCs。OA 患者的血清 IL-37 水平与 VAS 评分以及血液中的 CRP、ESR 呈正相关。在滑膜细胞中，IL-37 与 IL-1β、TNF-α 和 IL-6 之间也存在正相关。此外，IL-37 在体外抑制 EIOA 患者 PBMCs 和 SCs 中 IL-1β、TNF-α 和 IL-6 的表达。总之，我们的研究结果表明，IL-37 在 EIOA 患者中增加，并与疾病活动呈正相关，EIOA 患者 PBMCs 和滑膜细胞中的促炎细胞因子如 IL-1β、TNF-α 和 IL-6 被重组 IL-37 抑制。因此，IL-37 可能成为治疗 OA 炎症的新治疗靶点。
