FGF21 exerts comparable pharmacological efficacy with Adalimumab in ameliorating collagen-induced rheumatoid arthritis by regulating systematic inflammatory response

Previous studies have reported that Fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) can regulate inflammation and may play an important role in inflammatory and immune-mediated diseases, such as autoimmune diseases. Adalimumab is one of the clinically effective anti-rheumatoid arthritis (RA) drugs. The aim of this study was to compare the therapeutic efficacy of FGF21 and Adalimumab on collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) model mice. Mice with CIA were subcutaneously treated with FGF21 or Adalimumab at dose of 1 mg kg−1 d−1, respectively. Our results showed that FGF21 significantly alleviated the severity of arthritis by reducing cellular immune responses and exerted the similar anti-inflammatory effects with Adalimumab in decreasing the mRNA and protein expression levels of IL-2, IL-6 and IL-17. However, the expression levels of IL-1β, RANKL and IL-10 in the mice treated with FGF21 were decreased 2.2-fold, 2.5-fold and increased 4.3-fold compared with Adalimumab, respectively. However, the levels of TNF-α in the mice treated with Adalimumab were lower than those in the mice treated with FGF21. Western blotting results demonstrated that FGF21 displayed equivalent effects with Adalimumab by inhibiting NF-κB/IκBα signaling pathway. However, FGF21 could also regulate systematic inflammatory response and the mechanism maybe related to other signal pathway. In summary, FGF21 exerts comparable pharmacological efficacy with Adalimumab by regulating systematic inflammatory response, providing that FGF21 may be a promising therapeutic agent for RA patients.