Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Our previous study has identified that the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) by intraarticular injection of core peptide (CP) significantly suppressed disease activity and inhibited synovial hyperplasia, but the effect of CP which was direct action or through T cell-mediated on synoviocytes did not be still studies.
OBJECTIVE: To comparatively examine the effects of CP on the proliferation and apoptosis in synoviocytes of RA and osteoarthritis (OA).
METHODS: Synovial tissues were obtained from RA or OA patients at the time of total joint replacement surgery. Synovial cells were isolated from synovial tissues by collagenase digestion. Cell proliferation was measured with MTT assay. Cells at passages 3 were used for the experiments and randomly divided into five groups: control group, 1 μmol/L MTX, low-dosage CP (10 μmol/L), middle-dosage CP (25 μmol/L) and high-dosage CP (50 μmol/L) groups. Cell proliferation of each group was assessed by MTT, and apoptotic index of the cells were detected using flow cytometry (FCM).
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The proliferation of synoviocytes in RA were found higher than those in OA (P < 0.05). All three dosage of CP could inhibit the proliferation and induce the apoptosis of synoviocytes in OA, showing a dosage-dependent manner. High-dosage CP could remarkably induce the apoptosis of synoviocytes in OA, but middle or high-dosage CP could remarkably induce the apoptosis of synoviocytes in RA. The effect of CP on synoviocytes in RA was inferior to that on synoviocytes in OA. The results indicated that CP had a direct effect on synoviocytes. High-dosage CP inhibited over-proliferation of synoviocytes in RA, while middle and high-dosage CP might induced apoptosis of synoviocytes in RA.