Visfatin: A Potential Therapeutic Target for Rheumatoid Arthritis

Abstract

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is usually a chronic, systemic inflammatory disorder primarily targeting the synovium and articular cartilage. It is incurable, costly and responds poorly to treatment. Methotrexate alone or in combination with conventional and/or biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) is often used to induce remission of active disease. The effectiveness of treatment is, however, limited and most patients develop chronic disability and require total knee arthroplasty or total hip replacement. Emerging therapies targeting specific cytokines and growth factors in the RA inflammatory cascade offer potent new means of modifying disease activity. Recently, increased concentrations of adipokines, including visfatin, mainly produced by adipocytes in serum and joint synovial fluid, were found in RA patients. Visfatin has important pro-inflammatory and catabolic roles in RA pathogenesis and is now being studied as a potential therapeutic target for RA. Here we discuss the relationship between visfatin and RA and its potential as a therapeutic target for RA.

Proinflammatory Actions of Visfatin/Nicotinamide Phosphoribosyltransferase (Nampt) Involve Regulation of Insulin Signaling Pathway and Nampt Enzymatic Activity

“…Collectively, visfatin appears to be a key cytokine involved in a large panel of chronic inflammatory diseases and immune responses. A better understanding of visfatin signaling and the pathways involved would be a major step toward the development of strategies that allow targeting this protein for anti-inflammatory purposes (11,14).…”

Adipokines in rheumatoid arthritis

“…Other studies have demonstrated a correlation between serum and synovial fluid levels of visfatin and the pathogenesis of RA [13,41,48,49]. This adipokine can act as a regulator of inflammation and the destruction process of joints [35] and induce stimulation of great quantities of chemokines [50], thus possibly contributing to the inflammatory state of RA.…”

“…Also known as PBEF (pre-B-cell colony-enhancing factor) or Nicotinamide Phosphoribosyltransferase (Nampt) [41], visfatin is a protein with molecular weight of 52 kDa, first described by Samal et al (1994) [42]. It is primarily found in liver, bone marrow and muscle tissue, but also produced by adipose tissue and secreted by macrophage [43].…”

Distribution and Expression of Visfatin-Positive Cells in the Spleen of Lipopolysaccharide-Stimulated Piglets

“…At present, the research on visfatin mainly focuses on acute and chronic inflammatory disorders, obesity and metabolic diseases (Stephens & Vidal-Puig, 2006;Zhu et al, 2008;Bao et al, 2009;Eker et al, 2010;Huang et al, 2011;Al-Suhaimi & Shehzad, 2013). In a pilot study, we demonstrated that visfatin was expressed in the immune organs of mice and chickens.…”