Immunomodulatory Effects of Bee Venom in Human Synovial Fibroblast Cell Line

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.