Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease is treated by non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Considering that use of medicinal plants has lower side effects than chemical drugs and Elaeagnus angustifolia is one of the plants used in the traditional medicine is, the present study was conducted to investigate the anti-inflammatory property of the aqueous extract of the Elaeagnus angustifolia by assessing the expression of the iNOS and COX2 as inflammatory genes. METHODS: This experimental study was performed on 35 male Wistar rats in 5 groups of 7. Seven rats were considered as control group, and in the rest of rats, rheumatoid arthritis was induced according to the CIA protocol with collagen type 2 injection. One group was not treated as the control group and three groups were treated orally for a period of 30 days by ibuprofen with the concentration 15 mg/kg and the aqueous extract of the Elaeagnus angustifolia with the concentration 350 mg/kg and their combination, then expression of the COX2 and iNOS genes was measured by real-time PCR technique. FINDINGS: Treatment with ibuprofen and the aqueous extract reduced the genes expression. In other words, the expression of the iNOS gene decreased more in the ibuprofen group (6.34±0.49) than the Elaeagnus angustifolia (7.71±0.61; p<0.001) and the expression of the COX2 gene decreased more in Elaeagnus angustifolia (7.70±0.77) than ibuprofen group (9.93±0.68; p< 0.001). CONCLUSION: It seems that the aqueous extract of the Elaeagnus angustifolia can be used independently or together with ibuprofen to treatment the rheumatoid arthritis. © 2018, Babol University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved.