Inhibiting IL-6 in medicine: a new twist to sustain inhibition of his cytokine tin the therapy of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

Abstract

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a chronic, progressive disease characterized by an increase in blood pressure in the lungs' arteries. It can occur in a variety of species, including humans, dogs, cats, and horses. To date, PAH has a high mortality rate in both veterinary and human medicine, often due to complications such as heart failure. The complex pathological mechanisms of PAH involve multiple cellular signalling pathways at various levels. IL-6 is a powerful pleiotropic cytokine that regulates several phases of immune response, inflammation, and tissue remodelling. The hypothesis of this study was that the use of an IL-6 antagonist in PAH could interrupt or mitigate the cascade of events that leads to the progression of the disease and the worsening of clinical outcome, as well as tissue remodelling. In this study, we used two pharmacological protocols with an IL-6 receptor antagonist in a monocrotaline-induced PAH model in rats. Our results showed that the use of an IL-6 receptor antagonist had a significant protective effect, ameliorating both haemodynamic parameters, lung and cardiac function, tissue remodelling, and the inflammation associated with PAH. The results of this study suggest that the inhibition IL-6 could be a useful pharmacological strategy in PAH, in both human and veterinary medicine.

Keywords: IL-6; Inflammation; Lung; PAH; Veterinary medicine.