On August 21, Professor Dai Zhenhua of Guangdong Provincial Hospital of traditional Chinese medicine and Professor Lu Chuanjian jointly published a research paper entitled "dihydroartemisinin ameliorates psionic skin inflammation and its relapsing by diminuting CD8 + T-cell memory in wild type and humanized mice" online in theranostics (impact factor 8.579). This study reported that dihydroartemisinin, one of the Artemisia annua family drugs, can regulate CD8 + memory T cells in inflammatory environment, and has a good prevention and treatment effect on psoriasis recurrence. It shows that dihydroartemisinin is expected to be developed as a new immunosuppressant to prevent recurrence of psoriasis.

Psoriasis, commonly known as psoriasis, is a common immune-mediated chronic inflammatory skin disease. Its course of disease is long, easy to relapse and difficult to treat, so it is listed as one of the top ten human diseases by the World Health Organization. At present, there are more than 125 million patients with psoriasis in the world, and there are about 8-10 million patients in China. The disease can also cause a variety of complications, such as cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, psoriatic arthritis and so on, which seriously affects the quality of life of patients. At present, there are many methods and drugs for the treatment of psoriasis. But these methods can not effectively reduce the recurrence of psoriasis, easy to relapse is the difficulty of clinical treatment.

Dihydroartemisinin has anti-inflammatory, anti fibrosis, immune regulation and other pharmacological effects. Previously, Tu youyou's team has found that dihydroartemisinin has a significant effect on systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), but whether it can treat psoriasis has not been determined. The results showed that dihydroartemisinin could significantly reduce the infiltration of inflammatory cells and the release of IL-17A and other inflammatory factors in the skin lesions of the first onset mice by inhibiting the NF - κ B pathway. Importantly, dihydroartemisinin can also significantly reduce and prevent the secondary disease of psoriasis mice, the effect is significantly better than the traditional treatment of methotrexate, further studies found that this effect is closely related to the down-regulation of CD8 + memory T cells in mice. The study also further transplanted the psoriatic skin of psoriatic patients into humanized mice to establish a more clinical human skin psoriasis like lesion model, and found that dihydroartemisinin can also down regulate the human CD8 + memory T cells of the model mice, thereby reducing the skin damage of patients with psoriasis.

Professor Lu Chuanjian and Professor Dai Zhenhua are the corresponding authors of the paper. Assistant researcher Chen Yuchao, associate chief physician Yan Yuhong and assistant researcher Liu Huazhen are the co first authors of the paper. The research results provide a scientific basis for dihydroartemisinin to improve the recurrence of psoriasis, which has a strong clinical transformation potential. The research was supported by the National Key Laboratory of dampness syndrome of traditional Chinese medicine jointly built by the provincial and Ministry of China and the natural science foundation of Guangdong Province.

Time: 2020.8.31

Source:http://www.cntcm.com.cn/2020-08/31/content_ 80108.htm