Abstract
Purpose: :
Some studies have shown the role of gold nanoparticles (nanogold) on the production and release of cytokines both in animal models and humans with inflammatory diseases, but there are no reports on the effects of nanogold in ocular inflammatory disease, mainly uveitis. Thus we here demonstrated the effects of topic nanogold in inflammatory response in an animal model of uveitis.
Methods: :
Adult male Wistar rats (weighing 250-300g, n=4 per group) were randomly divided into three groups: (1) saline (2) LPS (100 µg/100 µl into subcutaneous tissue) + saline eye drop (3) LPS + nanogold eye drop ( 40mg/l). Three hours after LPS administration, nanogold eye drop was administered. After 24 hours rats were anesthetized and aqueous humor was sampled and the irides were removed. Aqueous humor tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF) was determined using ELISA. In addition, oxidative damage and the protein content of tool-like receptor 4 (TLR4) and nuclear factor-kB (NF-kB) were determined using western blot in the irides.
Results: :
The administration of LPS induced eye inflammatory response characterized by increased aqueous humor TNF and irides oxidative damage. All these parameters were decreased by the administration of nanogold. Since the inflammatory response secondary to LPS administration depends, in part, to the activation of the TLR4-NF-kB pathway we demonstrated here that a potential mechanism to explain the nanogold observed effects was the decrease on TLR4 content and NF-kB activation.
Conclusions: :
These findings suggest that topic nanogold could decrease intraocular inflammation by interfering in the TLR4-NF-kB pathways, being a target to new therapeutic options in the treatment of uveitis.
Keywords: immunomodulation/immunoregulation • uveitis-clinical/animal model • transcription factors