PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Kurien, Biji T AU - Harris, Valerie M AU - Quadri, Syed M S AU - Coutinho-de Souza, Patricia AU - Cavett, Joshua AU - Moyer, Amanda AU - Ittiq, Bilal AU - Metcalf, Angela AU - Ramji, Husayn F AU - Truong, Dat AU - Kumar, Ramesh AU - Koelsch, Kristi A AU - Centola, Mike AU - Payne, Adam AU - Danda, Debashish AU - Scofield, R Hal TI - Significantly reduced lymphadenopathy, salivary gland infiltrates and proteinuria in MRL-<em>lpr/lpr</em> mice treated with ultrasoluble curcumin/turmeric: increased survival with curcumin treatment AID - 10.1136/lupus-2015-000114 DP - 2015 Sep 01 TA - Lupus Science &amp; Medicine PG - e000114 VI - 2 IP - 1 4099 - http://lupus.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000114.short 4100 - http://lupus.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000114.full AB - 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'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 Sjögren'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±1147, 742±331 and 385±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.