The Effect Of Simvastatin On Rat Intervertebral Disc Cells

Objective: Investigate the expression of typeⅡcollagen and aggrecan at rat nucleus pulposus(NP) cells exposed in deferent kinds of concentrations of simvastatin.Methods: NP cells from a rabbit disc were harvested and cultured in vitro, and appraised typeⅡcollagen from the third generation cells by immunohistochemical method. Then they were randomly divided into five groups with different concentrations of simvastatin, while not drug in the blank control group. Semi-quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction(RT-PCR) were used to quantify typeⅡcollagen and aggrecan respectively. And detect the changes of cells viability.Results: Simvastatin can promote typeⅡcollagen and aggrecan expression at the concentration of exceeding 0.2μmol / l, and reached their peaks at 0.4μmol / l, while descended at 0.8μmol/l. Simvastatin at 0.8μmol / l affected the viability of the NP cells exposed. While the concentration at 0.1 to 0.4μmol / l didn't obviously affect cell activity.Conclusion: Simvastatin can promote rabbit NP cells of typeⅡcollagen and aggrecan expression, to improve the process of disc degeneration. Within the concentration range less than 0.4μmol / l the cell viability had no significant effect.