@article {Kuriene000114, author = {Biji T Kurien and Valerie M Harris and Syed M S Quadri and Patricia Coutinho-de Souza and Joshua Cavett and Amanda Moyer and Bilal Ittiq and Angela Metcalf and Husayn F Ramji and Dat Truong and Ramesh Kumar and Kristi A Koelsch and Mike Centola and Adam Payne and Debashish Danda and R Hal Scofield}, title = {Significantly reduced lymphadenopathy, salivary gland infiltrates and proteinuria in MRL-lpr/lpr mice treated with ultrasoluble curcumin/turmeric: increased survival with curcumin treatment}, volume = {2}, number = {1}, elocation-id = {e000114}, year = {2015}, doi = {10.1136/lupus-2015-000114}, publisher = {Archives of Disease in childhood}, abstract = {Objectives Commercial curcumin (CU), derived from food spice turmeric (TU), has been widely studied as a potential therapeutic for a variety of oncological and inflammatory conditions. Lack of solubility/bioavailability has hindered curcumin{\textquoteright}s therapeutic efficacy in human diseases. We have solubilised curcumin in water applying heat/pressure, obtaining up to 35-fold increase in solubility (ultrasoluble curcumin (UsC)). We hypothesised that UsC or ultrasoluble turmeric (UsT) will ameliorate systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and Sj{\"o}gren{\textquoteright}s syndrome (SS)-like disease in MRL-lpr/lpr mice.Methods Eighteen female MRL-lpr/lpr (6 weeks old) and 18 female MRL-MpJ mice (6 weeks old) were used. Female MRL-lpr/lpr mice develop lupus-like disease at the 10th week and die at an average age of 17 weeks. MRL-MpJ mice develop lupus-like disease around 47 weeks and typically die at 73 weeks. Six mice of each strain received autoclaved water only (lpr-water or MpJ-water group), UsC (lpr-CU or MpJ-CU group) or UsT (lpr-TU or MpJ-TU group) in the water bottle.Results UsC or UsT ameliorates SLE in the MRL-lpr/lpr mice by significantly reducing lymphoproliferation, proteinuria, lesions (tail) and autoantibodies. lpr-CU group had a 20\% survival advantage over lpr-water group. However, lpr-TU group lived an average of 16 days shorter than lpr-water group due to complications unrelated to lupus-like illness. CU/TU treatment inhibited lymphadenopathy significantly compared with lpr-water group (p=0.03 and p=0.02, respectively) by induction of apoptosis. Average lymph node weights were 2606{\textpm}1147, 742{\textpm}331 and 385{\textpm}68 mg, respectively, for lpr-water, lpr-CU and lpr-TU mice. Transferase dUTP nick end labelling assay showed that lymphocytes in lymph nodes of lpr-CU and lpr-TU mice underwent apoptosis. Significantly reduced cellular infiltration of the salivary glands in the lpr-TU group compared with the lpr-water group, and a trend towards reduced kidney damage was observed in the lpr-CU and lpr-TU groups.Conclusions These studies show that UsC/UsT could prove useful as a therapeutic intervention in SLE/SS.}, URL = {https://lupus.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000114}, eprint = {https://lupus.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000114.full.pdf}, journal = {Lupus Science \& Medicine} }