| Backgroud:Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease of unknown causes that is notorious for the chronic polyarticular synovial inflammation and progressive destruction of affected joints. Pathological progcess is mainly manifestated in:synovial inflammation and proliferation, hyperplasia of synovium leads to ischemia and that results in pannus formation, and the last part is the joint deformity and loss of function resulting from the breakup of cartilage and bone damages. Bone destruction starts in an early phase of diease duration in RA. It’s universally acknowledged that osteocalst(OC) plays a pivotal role in the mechanism of RA osteolytic disorders. Plenty of evidences show that the interaction between the receptor activation of nuclear factor kappa B ligand (RANKL) and its receptor activator (RANK)has an essential role in the differentiation and activation of osteoclasts. On the other side, it’s a suppression of OC differentiation and activation that osteoprotegrin(OPG) binds to RANKL competitively.Currently, there are treatments targeting cytokines, and disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), such as methotrexate(MTX), but these treatments have some problems.Therefore, therapeutics that can be safely used for an extended period of time would be preferable. Complementary and alternative medicines including traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) have been used for the arthritic diseases through the ages. RA belongs to the TCM "Bi" syndrome. Recently, there are many reports concerning the anti-arthritic action mechanisms of TCM-based herbal formulas and crude herbal extracts or isolated ingredients.Professor Jiao Shude named RA as " Wangbi ", and presented " Bu shen qu han zhi wang" decoction which has obtained good clinical efficacy. In the preliminary experiments, it’s already proved that the whole formula has a better effect on Collagen Ⅱ-induced Arthritis (CIA) rats.Aim:To evaluate the effect of" Bu shen qu han zhi wang" decoction on bone destruction and symptoms improvement of CIA rats.Trying to invesgate that the whole formula could affect the bone destruction of CIA rats through osteoclasts and OPG/RANK/RANKLMethods:Groups of rats with Collagen Ⅱ-induced Arthritis(CIA) were treated with methotrexate (0.3mg/100g/w), low-dose, usual-dose and high-dose herbal medicine from day7(the second immuing day) to the end of experiment(day35). The nomal rats and CIA rats without medicine intervention as the control groups.To obeserve the symptoms and weight rats during the experimental course, and the left knee were then removed for histopathology, including HE staining, TRAP staining for OC and Immunohistochemical staining of OPG/RANKL Besides, to evaluate semi-quantitative analysis for the histopathological slides.Results:1. The rats’arthritis was induced successfully by Collagen-II.2. Compared with the model group, MTX and different doses herbal medicine groups have effects on the symptoms, changes of weights and histopathologically qualitative and quantitative analyses of CIA rats. There is a certain dose-effect relationship, in which the usual-dose herbal medicine group has the best effect, compared with other groups of CIA rats.Conclusions:The usual-dose " Bu shen qu han zhi wang " decoction can improve symptoms and postpone the bone destruction of CIA rats. We suggest that the possible mechanism of this progress could be a suppression of osteoclasts through OPG/RANK/RANKL... |
PDF Full Text Request