Study On Influence Of Bisuqing Medicinal Mixture Upon Serum Cytokine Levels In Rheumatoid Arthritis In Active State

Objective To observe the clinical curative effects of Bisuqing Medicinal Mixture(BMM) and explore the influence of BMM upon serum IL-1β, TNF-α, IL-4 and IL-10 in rheumatoid arthritis(RA) in active state. Methods In the clinical research, 60 cases were randomly divided into two groups. 30 cases were treated with BMM and 30 cases were treated with indometacin for control. The experiments apply Adjuvant Arthritis(AA) rat as pathological model. Results The clinical study show BMM could significantly reduce the IL-lp and TNF-a level as well as notably increase the IL-4 and IL-10 level in serum, which have increased and reduced evidently in RA patients respectively, paralleling with the improvement of the symptoms, signs and laboratory examinations. The total effective rates were 80% in treatment group and 73.33% in control group respectively(P>0.05). The treatment group was superior to control group in relieving symptoms of joints, improving syndrome of TCM and laboratory parameter(P<0.05). Animal experiments show that BMM can inhibit the original and secondary arthritis of AA rat, lower the IL-1β and TNF-α level as well as increase the IL-4 and IL-10 level in serum. BMM had better effect in reducing the serum IL-1β and TNF-α level, increasing the weight of AA rat than that of indometacin. Conclusions BMM is able to improve the joint and general symptoms of RA in active state. The mechanisms may be related to reducing the IL-1β and TNF-α level , increasing the IL-4 and IL-10 level, suppressing pathogenic effect and enhancing antiinflammatory activity.