Etodolac improves collagen induced rheumatoid arthritis in rats by inhibiting synovial inflammation, fibrosis and hyperplasia

Microporation-Mediated Transdermal Delivery of In Situ Gel Incorporating Etodolac-Loaded PLGA Nanoparticles for Management of Rheumatoid Arthritis

Management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) requires long-term administration of different medications since there has been no cure until now. Etodolac (ETD) is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug commonly used for RA management. However, its long-term administration resulted in severe side effects. This study aimed to develop a transdermal in situ gel incorporating ETD-loaded polymeric nanoparticles (NPs) to target the affected joints for long-term management of RA. Several PLGA NPs incorporating 1% ETD were prepared by nanoprecipitation and optimized according to the central composite design. The optimum NPs (F1) exhibited 96.19 ± 2.31% EE, 282.3 ± 0.62 nm PS, 0.383 ± 0.04 PDI, and -6.44 ± 1.69 ZP. A hyaluronate coating was applied to F1 (H-F1) to target activated macrophages at inflammation sites. H-F1 exhibited 287.4 ± 4.2 nm PS, 0.267 ± 0.02 PDI, and -23.7 ± 3.77 ZP. Pluronic F-127 in situ gel (H-F1G) showed complete gelation at 29 °C within 5 min. ETD permeation from H-F1G was sustained over 48 h when applied to microporated skin and exhibited significant enhancement of all permeation parameters. Topical application of H-F1G (equivalent to 8 mg ETD) to Wistarrat microporated skin every 48 h resulted in antirheumatic therapeutic efficacy comparable to commercial oral tablets (10 mg/kg/day).

The accelerated organ senescence and proteotoxicity in thyrotoxicosis mice

The mechanism of aging has always been the focus of research, because aging is related to disease susceptibility and seriously affects people's quality of life. The diseases also accelerate the aging process, especially the pathological changes of substantive organs, such as cardiac hypertrophy, severely shortened lifespan. So, lesions in organs are both a consequence and a cause of aging. However, the disease in a given organ is not in isolation but is a systemic problem. Our previous study found that thyrotoxicosis mice model has aging characteristics including immunosenescence, lipotoxicity, malnutrition. But all these characteristics will lead to organ senescence, therefore, this study continued to study the aging changes of important organs such as heart, liver, and kidney in thyrotoxicosis mice using tandem mass tags (TMT) proteomics method. The results showed that the excess thyroxine led to cardiac hypertrophy. In the liver, the ability to synthesize functional proteins, detoxify, and metabolism were declined. The effect on the kidney was the decreased ability of detoxify and metabolism. The main finding of the present study was that the acceleration of organ senescence by excess thyroxine was due to proteotoxicity. The shared cause of proteotoxicity in the three organs included the intensify of oxidative phosphorylation, the redundancy production of ribosomes, and the lack of splicing and ubiquitin proteasome system function. Totally, proteotoxicity was another parallel between thyrotoxicosis and aging in addition to lipotoxicity. Our research provided a convenient and appropriate animal model for exploring aging mechanism and antiaging drugs.

Identification of two potential immune-related biomarkers of Graves' disease based on integrated bioinformatics analyses

BACKGROUND

Graves' disease (GD) is an autoimmune disease, the incidence of which is increasing yearly. GD requires long-life therapy. Therefore, the potential immune-related biomarkers of GD need to be studied.

METHOD

In our study, differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were derived from the online Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) microarray expression dataset GSE71956. Protein‒protein interaction (PPI) network analyses were used to identify hub genes, which were validated by qPCR. GSEA was used to screen potential pathways and related immune cells. Next, CIBERSORT analysis was used to further explore the immune subtype distribution pattern among hub genes. ROC curves were used to analyze the specificity and sensitivity of hub genes.

RESULT

44 DEGs were screened from the GEO dataset. Two hub genes, EEF1A1 and EIF4B, were obtained from the PPI network and validated by qPCR (p < 0.05). GSEA was conducted to identify potential pathways and immune cells related to these the two hub genes. Immune cell subtype analysis revealed that hub genes had extensive associations with many different types of immune cells, particularly resting memory CD4⁺ T cells. AUCs of ROC analysis were 0.687 and 0.733 for EEF1A1 and EIF4B, respectively.

CONCLUSION

Our study revealed two hub genes, EEF1A1 and EIF4B, that are associated with resting memory CD4⁺ T cells and potential immune-related molecular biomarkers and therapeutic targets of GD.

Natural medicines of targeted rheumatoid arthritis and its action mechanism

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease involving joints, with clinical manifestations of joint inflammation, bone damage and cartilage destruction, joint dysfunction and deformity, and extra-articular organ damage. As an important source of new drug molecules, natural medicines have many advantages, such as a wide range of biological effects and small toxic and side effects. They have become a hot spot for the vast number of researchers to study various diseases and develop therapeutic drugs. In recent years, the research of natural medicines in the treatment of RA has made remarkable achievements. These natural medicines mainly include flavonoids, polyphenols, alkaloids, glycosides and terpenes. Among them, resveratrol, icariin, epigallocatechin-3-gallate, ginsenoside, sinomenine, paeoniflorin, triptolide and paeoniflorin are star natural medicines for the treatment of RA. Its mechanism of treating RA mainly involves these aspects: anti-inflammation, anti-oxidation, immune regulation, pro-apoptosis, inhibition of angiogenesis, inhibition of osteoclastogenesis, inhibition of fibroblast-like synovial cell proliferation, migration and invasion. This review summarizes natural medicines with potential therapeutic effects on RA and briefly discusses their mechanisms of action against RA.