Statins, a class of drugs widely used to treat high cholesterol, have also recently been studied for their potential role in inflammation and other cell processes, including immune response.
They have also been shown to induce apoptosis (cell death) in normal cells and tumor cells. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) causes proliferation of synovial tissue, which lines the joints, but little is known about the effect of statins on this type of tissue.
A study published in the February 2006 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism examined whether statins are able to induce apoptosis in synovial cells of patients with RA and found that they have potential as a novel way of treating the disease.
The activation and proliferation of synovial cells, which is thought to play a key role in RA, may be exacerbated when apoptosis of synovial cells is either insufficient or resistant to treatment. In the first study to demonstrate whether statins can induce apoptosis in synovial cells of RA patients, researchers led by Takao Nagashima of Jichi Medical School, Tochigi, Japan measured the effect in vitro of two statins, fluvastatin (a fat-soluble statin) and pravastatin (a water-soluble statin) on human synovial cells from patients with RA and osteoarthropathy. "In the present study, we demonstrated that fluvastatin induced apoptosis in synoviocytes from patients with RA, but not in those from patients with osteoarthropathy, suggesting that the apoptotic effect of fluvastatin is a mechanism for suppression of inflammatory arthritis such as RA by statins," the authors state.