Forsythia Pill Treatment Of Nodular Goiter, Clinical And Mechanism Of Elimination. Within

Objective: To estimate the therapeutic effect of Neixiaolianqiao pills (NXLQ pills) on nodular goiter patients, and try to explore its mechanism of action by observing its influence on human nodular goiter cell (NG cell) proliferation and apoptosis in vitro.Methods: Eighty patients were divided single blindly and randomly into two groups. Then were treated with NXLQ pills (n=40) or Euthyrox tablets (n=40) for eight weeks respectively. The sizes of the thyroids and nodules were measured by ultrasound before and after treatment. The serum level of thyroid hurmone was also detected. The serologic pharmacological test was used to explore the effects of NXLQ pill on human nodular goiter cells in vitro. The serums containing different medicines were obtained from the rabbits that had been given NXLQ pills or Euthyrox tablets orally for seven days. Then the sera were added to the culture medium, and their influence on NG cell proliferation, secretion and apoptosis were evaluated by morphology, MTT assay, thyroid hurmone detection and flowcytometry.The results:â‘  At the end of the clinical study, 37 patients in NXLQ group and 36 patiens in Euthyrox group were available for statistical analysis. The effective rate was 83.8% in NXLQ group, which was higher than 61.1% in Euthyrox group (P<0.05). Before treatment, no difference was found between the two groups (P>0.05) on the weight of thyroid and the maximum diameter of nodule. While after one course of treatment, both the average weight of thyroid and the maximum diameter of nodule were reduced obviously (P<0.05 as compared with pretherapy), and the NXLQ had greater effect than Euthyrox on reducing the maximum diameter of nodule (P<0.05). â‘¡ NXLQ conditional medium with or without TSH could inhibit NG cells growth (P<0.05, control vs NXLQ groups) and with dose- and time-dependence to a certain extent. Euthyrox conditional medium could also inhibit cell growth, but this effect was reduced when TSH were added into the medium. Moreover, the relative concentrations of FT3 and FT4 in culture supernatant of NXLQ group were not changed as conpared with control, but were reduced in TSH-NXLQ group as compared with TSH-control group (P<0.01). This suggested that the NXLQ could inhibit the TSH- induced FT3, FT4 secretion. Morphology and Annexin V assay showed that the apoptotic rates in NXLQ and Euthyrox groups were greatly increased (P<0.05 vs control), and the apoptotic rate in the prior group was higher than that in the later group (P<0.05).