Expression of glucocorticoids receptor isoforms and their correlations with disease activities in pa-tients with systemic lupus erythematosus or rheumatoid arthritis / 中华微生物学和免疫学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To analyze the differences with the expression of glucocorticoids receptor isoforms ( GRα, GRβ, GRγand GR-P ) and cytokines [ IL-6, macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF), IFN-γand IL-10] between patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid ar-thritis ( RA) , and to further understand their correlations with disease activities.Methods Fifty-five pa-tients with SLE, forty-nine patients with RA and thirty-eight healthy subjects were recruited in this study. All patients were steroid-naive.The expression of GRα, GRβ, GRγ, and GR-P in peripheral blood mononu-clear cells at transcript levels were determined by real-time PCR.Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to detect the expression of IL-6, MIF, IFN-γand IL-10 in serum samples.Results The percentages of GRαin all subjects were the highest among four isoforms of GR, followed by GR-P, GRγand GRβ.Com-pared with healthy subjects, patients with SLE or RA showed significantly decreased expression of GRα( P<0.05), but increased expression of GR-P (P<0.05).The percentages of GR-P in patients with RA were higher than those in patients with SLE (P<0.05).The expression of GRαwas negatively correlated with SLE disease activity index (SLEDAI) and disease activity score 28 (DAS28).SLE or RA patients with high disease activity showed lower expression of GRαthan those with low disease activity.The levels of IL-6, IFN-γand MIF in patients with SLE or RA were significantly higher than those in healthy subjects ( P<0.05).A negative correlation was observed between the expression of IL-6 and GRαin patients with SLE (P<0.05).The expression of IFN-γwas negatively correlated with GRαin patients with RA (P<0.05). Conclusion There were significant differences with the expression of GR isoforms among patients with SLE, patients with RA and healthy subjects, indicating the change of internal environment in patients might be in-volved in GR alternative splicing.GRαwas the predominant isoform and was negatively correlated with dis-ease activities.Oversecretion of cytokines resulted in a decreased expression of GRα.This study would be useful for the diagnosis of the disease status and for monitoring clinical treatment.