Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis with Traditional Chinese Medicine

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease that will affect quality of life and, working efficiency, and produce negative thoughts for patients. Current therapy of RA is treated with disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs). Although most of these treatment methods are effective, most patients still have a pleasant experience either due to poor efficacy or side effects or both. Interleukin-6 receptor (IL6R) is important in the pathogenesis of RA. In this study, we would like to detect the potential candidates which inhibit IL6R against RA from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). We use TCM compounds from the TCM Database@Taiwan for virtually screening the potential IL6R inhibitors. The TCM candidate compound, calycosin, has potent binding affinity with IL6R protein. The molecular dynamics simulation was employed to validate the stability of interaction in the protein complex with calycosin. The analysis indicates that protein complex with calycosin is more stable. In addition, calycosin is known to be one of the components of Angelica sinensis, which has been indicated to have an important role in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Therefore, calycosin is a potential candidate as lead compounds for further study in drug development process with IL6R protein against rheumatoid arthritis.