Effect of intra-articular usteoprotegerin gene transduction on the expression of tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase and vascular endothelial growth factor mRNA in collagen induced arthritis / 中华风湿病学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective This study was designed to investigate the expression changes of osteopro-tegerin (OPG), tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) mRNA in collagen induced arthritis(CIA) rats. Methods After CIA was induced in Sprague-Dawley rats, the experimental animals were treated with PBS or rAAV-EGFP or rAAV-hOPG (100 μl/day) intra-articular injection for 10 days. Messenger RNAs (mRNAs) were obtained from CIA synovium 40days after first immun-ization. Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reactions (RT-PCR) were carried out to detect the mRNA encoding OPG, TRAP, VEGF and β-actin, which acted as inner control. The genes detected clearly by RT-PCR were quantified using real-time PCR. Results The expression of all genes was confirmed by specific single bands in RT-PCR. Real-time PCR showed that the expression levels of TRAP and VEGF were increased, whereas those of OPG mRNA were decreased in CIA group compared with normal controls. The intra-articular gene transduction markedly increased the gene copies of OPG by 128.21% (P<0.01). The expression change of OPG in synovium also caused the decrease of the expression levels of TRAP and VEGF by 58.79% (P<0.01)and 17.85% (P>0.05) respectively, however, the expression change of VEGF was not statistically significant. Conclusion OPG gene mediated by rAAV can be successfully tranfered to knee joint synovium in vivo. The results of this study suggest that gene transfer using rAAV-OPG may be a feasible and effective therapeutic approach to treat or prevent joint destruction in inflammatory arthritis.