Gene expression profiling reveals novel protective effects of Aminaphtone on ECV304 endothelial cells

A Systematic Review of Aminaphtone from Pathophysiology to Clinical Applications: Focus on New Rheumatological Acquisitions

Aminaphtone is a chemical drug that has been used for more than thirty years to treat a variety of vascular disorders, with good clinical results and a satisfying safety profile. In the last two decades, multiple clinical studies have reported the efficacy of the drug in different clinical scenarios of altered microvascular reactivity, describing the downregulation of adhesion molecules (i.e., VCAM, ICAM, Selectins), vasoconstrictor peptides (i.e., Endothelin-1), and pro-inflammatory cytokine expression (i.e., IL-6, IL-10, VEGF, TGF-beta) by Aminaphtone. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge concerning Aminaphtone, with particular attention to rheumatological conditions in which microvascular disfunction plays a pivotal role, such as Raynaud's phenomenon and systemic sclerosis. These latter conditions may represent a promising field of application for Aminaphtone, due to the growing pre-clinical, clinical, and instrumental reports of efficacy. However, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials are lacking and are desirable.

Aminaphtone Efficacy in Primary and Secondary Raynaud's Phenomenon: A Feasibility Study

Objectives

The aim of this six-month open feasibility study was to evaluate skin blood perfusion and clinical symptom changes during aminaphtone treatment in patients with either primary or secondary Raynaud’s phenomenon to systemic sclerosis.

Methods

Ninety-two patients referring for Raynaud’s phenomenon have been enrolled in November during routine clinical assessment, after informed consent. Aminaphtone was administered 75 mg twice daily in addition to current treatments to forty-six patients. Skin blood perfusion was measured by Laser Speckle Contrast Analysis (LASCA) at the level of fingertips, periungual areas, dorsum and palm of hands, and face at baseline (W0), after one (W1), four (W4), twelve (W12) and twenty-four (W24) weeks of treatment. Raynaud’s condition score (RCS) and both frequency and duration of Raynaud’s attacks were assessed at the same time.

Results

Compared with the control group, despite colder period of the year, aminaphtone treated patients showed a progressive statistically significant increase of blood perfusion, as well as a decrease of RCS, frequency of Raynaud’s attacks/day and their duration, from W0 to W12 in all skin areas. From W12 to W24 no further increase of blood perfusion was observed. The results were similar in both primary and secondary Raynaud’s phenomenon patients. Five weeks after aminaphtone discontinuation blood perfusion values were significantly higher than those at baseline in the majority of skin areas.

Conclusion

This study demonstrates that aminaphtone treatment increases skin blood perfusion and improves Raynaud’s phenomenon clinical symptoms, with sustained efficacy up to 6 months, even in patients with systemic sclerosis. A randomized, blind, controlled, clinical trial including a larger number of subjects is advisable to confirm these early results.

Bioinformatics analysis of microRNAs related to blood stasis syndrome in diabetes mellitus patients

In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), blood stasis syndrome (BSS) is mainly manifested by the increase of blood viscosity, platelet adhesion rate and aggregation, and the change of microcirculation, resulting in vascular endothelial injury. It is an important factor in the development of diabetes mellitus (DM). The aim of the present study was to screen out the potential candidate microRNAs (miRNAs) in DM patients with BSS by high-throughput sequencing (HTS) and bioinformatics analysis. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were incubated with 10% human serum to establish models of DM with BSS, DM without BSS (NBS), and normal control (NC). Total RNA of each sample was extracted and sequenced by the Hiseq2000 platform. Differentially expressed miRNAs (DE-miRNAs) were screened between samples and compared with known changes in mRNA abundance. Target genes of miRNAs were predicted by softwares. Gene Ontology (GO) and pathway enrichment analysis of the target genes were conducted. According to the significantly enriched GO annotations and pathways (P-value ≤ 0.001), we selected the key miRNAs of DM with BSS. It showed that the number of DE-miRNAs in BSS was 32 compared with non-blood stasis syndrome (NBS) and NC. The potential candidate miRNAs were chosen from GO annotations in which target genes were significantly enriched (-log10 (P-value) > 5), which included miR-140-5p, miR-210, miR-362-5p, miR-590-3p, and miR-671-3p. The present study screened out the potential candidate miRNAs in DM patients with BSS by HTS and bioinformatics analysis. The miRNAs will be helpful to provide valuable suggestions on clinical studies of DM with BSS at the gene level.

Time-course gene expression data on the transcriptional effects of Aminaphtone on ECV304 endothelial cells

We previously showed that Aminaphtone, a drug used in the treatment of chronic venous insufficiency, modulates several vasoactive factors, such as endothelin-1 and adhesion molecules. Here, we provide data of time-course experiments about the effects of Aminaphtone on gene expression at the genome-wide level in human endothelial cells undergoing cytokine stimulation in vitro. ECV-304 endothelial cells were incubated with interleukin-1β (IL-1β) in the presence or absence of Aminaphtone for 1, 3, and 6 h. Gene expression profiles were analyzed by microarray. This article contains complete data on the genes significantly modulated by the drug over time. The data are supplemental to our original research article reporting detailed analysis of the actions of Aminaphtone on IL-1β stimulated endothelial cells at the molecular level, "Gene expression profiling reveals novel protective effects of Aminaphtone on ECV304 endothelial cells" (Salazar et al., 2016) [1].