The clinical and pathogenetic significance of 70- and 27-KDA heat shock proteins in osteoarthritis

Objective: to establish the specific features of changes in the levels of heat shock proteins (HSP), chemokines, and a marker for collagen degradation in the blood of patients with osteoarthritis (OA) depending on the stage of the disease. Subjects and methods. 99 patients with knee OA were examined in the rheumatology room, Vladivostok Polyclinic Three. The diagnosis was verified in accordance with the 2010 European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) criteria. This group comprised 87 (88%) women and 12 (12%) men; the patients’ mean age was 66.7+7.9 years; the disease duration was 5.9+4.0 years. A control group included 21 apparently healthy women and 9 men; their mean age was 59.6+8.3 years. Enzyme immunoassay was carried out to determine the concentrations of query molecules in the blood of the patients included in the investigation. The investigators used ELISA kits for HSP70, HSP27 (SunLong Biotech Co. Ltd, China), CRTAP (cartilage-associated protein, CAP), TNF-α (tumor necrosis factor-α), and CXCL17 (chemokine (C-X-C motif) ligand 17) (Cloud-Clone Corp., USA). Results and discussion. The levels of HSP27 and HSP70, their ratio, and CAP in OA were significantly lower than those in the control group. Those of TNF-α and CXCL17 were, on the contrary, considerably higher than those in the control group. In the patients with OA, HSP70 demonstrated an inverse correlation with the levels of CAP and TNF-α. CAP was statistically significantly correlated with TNF-α. The latter was directly related to CXCL17. When the duration of the disease was 10 or more years, the level of CAP was significantly higher than that in patients with a 5-9-year history of OA (p 0.05). The level of CXCL17 reduced statistically significantly with longer disease duration (p