Anti-inflammatory Effects of Erythromycin in Mouse Knee Joints
Chen, Yuxi.
2019
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Osteoarthritis (OA) is
a degenerative disease with no known cure, it affects over 13 million people in the US.
OA patients suffer from physical pain, restriction of movement, and higher risk of
mental health issues. It's a huge burden on US healthcare system, and the patient
numbers are still growing. OA is a whole joint disease instead of articular cartilage
damage alone, that is why it is ... read moreimportant to study the whole joint when doing OA
research. Interleukin-1β (IL-1β) is a pro-inflammatory cytokine that is
involved in OA development in early stages. In OA joints, IL-1β can suppress type
II collagen and aggrecan expression, as well as stimulate matrix metalloproteinase
expression, causing cartilage damage. The levels of IL-1β elevate in multiple
sites of the OA joint, indicating that IL-1β could be one of the causes of the
whole joint disease. Erythromycin (EM) is an antibiotic in the macrolide family. Aside
from the antibiotic effect, recent studies discovered it could reverse
IL-1β-induced inflammation. In my research, I used IL-1β to induce OA, and
showed that EM to reverse the inflammation-induced joint damages. My study involves the
use of a whole mouse joint culture device (JM), in which IL-1β and EM were
intra-articularly injected. After IL-1β injection, I found that there was
statistical significance between treated and untreated groups, indicating the cartilage
health was damaged. After treating the knees with EM, a dose response of EM was
observed: a higher dose of EM (100 μM) reversed the damage of IL-1β to the
level where no statistical significance was found between EM treated IL-1β-induced
OA knees and knees without IL-1β treatment. From the results I could conclude that
EM has anti-inflammatory effects to IL-1β-induced OA in mouse knee
joints.
Thesis (M.S.)--Tufts University, 2019.
Submitted to the Dept. of Pharmacology and Drug Development.
Advisor: Li Zeng.
Committee: Emmanuel Pothos.
Keyword: Pharmacology.read less - ID:
- 1r66jd45k
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