Effects of Gu Ling Gao and its split reagent preparations on the adaptive immune function of rat osteoarthritis model

This study designed to investigate the mechanism of the effects of Gu Ling Gao(GLG) and its split reagent preparations(SRP) on osteoarthritis(OA) by detecting the changes of CD3+T cells, CD4+T cells, CD8+T cells, CD80, CD86, and COL-Ⅱ in OA patients. Firstly, total of 60 female SD rats randomly divided into normal(NG) and GLG, Gu Gao(GUG), Ling Gao(LG), celecoxib(CLXB), and model(M) groups, with 10 rats in each group. OA model was established by cold-fixation, and then rats in different group were gavaged with corresponding reagents for 10 weeks. Ten weeks later, immunofluorescence was used to detect CD3+, CD4+, CD8+T cells in knee synovium and plasma, while flow cytometry was applied to measure the percentage of CD80, CD86, CD3+, CD4+, CD8+T cells in cartilage. Finally, we found M group, compared with NG, showed lower percentage of CD3+T cells and CD4+T cells in cartilage and plasma(P 0.01), but higher CD80, CD86, COL-Ⅱ percentage in cartilage and higher percentage of CD3+T cells, CD4+T cells, CD8+T cells, CD4+/CD8+T cells in synovium(P 0.01); Compared with M, GLG could elevate the percentage of CD3+T cells and CD4+T cells(P 0.01), but reduce CD80, CD86, COL-Ⅱpercentage in cartilage and CD4+/CD8+ T cells ratio in synovium(P 0.01); Furthermore, compared with CLXB, LG, and GUG groups, GLG could increase the percentage of CD3+T cells and CD4+T cells and the ratio of CD4+/CD8+T cells in cartilage and plasma(P 0.01). We concluded that GLG may inhibit the activation of APC function of chondrocytes and suppress autoantigen immune response via improving general and local joint immune function of OA rats, then reduce joint synovial inflammation reaction, thus protect OA cartilage and synovium, and the effect is superior to its SRP and CLXB.