Researchers can turn off chronic inflammation while leaving intact the ability of cells to respond to short-term injuries and illnesses by targeting a newly identified protein, according to a report in Nature.
Chronic inflammation occurs when the immune system is stuck in overdrive, as with persistent conditions such as arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease or obesity. Acute inflammation – with pain, fever, swelling, and redness, for example – resolves relatively quickly.
Researchers found that a protein responsible for controlling inflammatory genes becomes degraded and is lost from cells during chronic inflammation.
In test tube experiments, restoring the protein called WSTF blocked chronic inflammation in human cells without interfering with acute inflammation, allowing appropriate immune responses to short-term threats.
The researchers then designed a medicine that protects WSTF from degradation and suppresses chronic inflammation by blocking the WSTF interaction with another protein in the cell nucleus.
The researchers have successfully tested the drug to treat mice with fatty liver disease or arthritis and to reduce inflammation in chronically inflamed knee cells obtained from patients undergoing joint replacement surgery.
Studying human tissue samples, the researchers found that WSTF is lost in the livers of patients with fatty liver disease but not in the livers of healthy people.
“Chronic inflammatory diseases cause a great deal of suffering and death, but we still have much to learn about what drives chronic inflammation and how to treat it,” study leader Zhixun Dou of Massachusetts General Hospital said in a statement.
“Our findings help us separate chronic and acute inflammation, as well as identify a new target for stopping chronic inflammation that results from aging and disease.”
