RÉSUMÉ
Objective:To study the effects of rat interleukin-10 (rIL-10) gene treatment on the expression of collagen , matrix metalloproteinase 13(MMP13) and their specific inhibitors the tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase 1(TIMP1) in porcine serum in-duced liver fibrosis rats then to explore the anti-fibrotic effect of rL-10.Methods:Thirty SD rats were divided into normal control and fibrosis model group.Normal control group (group C) was intraperitoneally injected with 0.5 ml normal sodium twice a week for 8 week, while the fibrosis model group was injected with equal volume of pig serum for 8 week.At the beginning of the 5th week, fibrosis model group was further randomly divided into a fibrosis model subgroup ( group M ) , rIL-10 gene treatment subgroup ( group I ) and empty vector control subgroup(group P).Rats in group C and M were injected with Ringer’s solution as a reagent control via the tail vein weekly, rats in group I were injected with the rIL-10 plasmid pcDNA3-rIL-10, and rats in group P were injected with empty vector pcDNA3.All rats were sacrificed at the end of 8th week, and the liver tissue samples were collected to observe deposition of collegan in liver tissue by sirius red staining and detected the expression of MMP 13 and TIMP1 in the liver tissue by SP immunohistochemistry .Re-sults:Sirius red staining showed that the area of the collegan deposition was dramatically increased in fibrosis model subgroup and emp -ty vector control subgroup compared with the normal control group , and the area of the collagen deposition was dramatically decreased in rIL-10 gene treatment subgroup compared with the fibrosis model and empty vector control subgroup .Immunohistochemistry analysis showed that the expression of MMP 13 and TIMP1 in fibrosis model subgroup and empty vector control subgroup was significantly higher than the normal control group , but compared with normal control group , expression of MMP13 was significantly increased and expres-sion of TIMP1 was significantly decreased in rIL-10 gene treatment subgroup .Compared with fibrosis model subgroup and empty vector control subgroup, the expression of MMP13 and TIMP1 was dramatically decreased in rIL-10 gene treatment subgroup.Conclusion:rIL-10 gene treatment attenuates the area of collagen deposition in liver fibrosis rats associated with downregulation of TIMP 1.