Immunomodulatory Effects of Bee Venom in Human Synovial Fibroblast Cell Line

Mohammadi, Ebrahim; Vatanpour, Hossein; Hosseini Shirazi, Farshad

doi:10.22037/ijpr.2015.1613

Immunomodulatory Effects of Bee Venom in Human Synovial Fibroblast Cell Line

Document Type : Research article

Authors

¹ Department of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran.

² Department of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

³ Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Center, School of Pharmacy, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

10.22037/ijpr.2015.1613

Abstract

As in Iranian traditional medicine, bee venom (BV) is a promising treatment for the rheumatoid arthritis (RA) which is considered as a problematic human chronic inflammatory disease in the present time. Smoking is considered to be a major risk factor in RA onset and severity. The main aim of this study is to investigate the effects of BV on cigarette smoke-induced inflammatory response in fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLS). Cytotoxicity of cigarette smoke condensate (CSC) and bee venom were determined by the tetrazolium (MTT) method in cultured synovial fibroblastes. The expression of interleukin-1β and sirtuin1 mRNA were analyzed by SYBR green real-time quantitative PCR. Differences between the mean values of treated and untreated groups were assessed by student t-test. Based on MTT assay, CSC and BV did not exert any significant cytotoxic effects up to 40 µg/mL and 10 µg/mL, respectively. Our results showed that interleukin-1β mRNA level was significantly up-regulated by CSC treatments in LPS-stimulated synoviocytes in a dose-dependent manner. Conversely, the expressions of IL-1β and Sirt1 were up-regulated even in lower concentrations of BV and attenuated at higher concentrations. Also, BV attenuated the CSC-induced and LPS-induced inflammatory responses in synovial fibroblasts. Our results support the epidemiological studies indicating pro-inflammatory effects of CSC and anti-inflammatory effects of BV on FLS cell line.

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