For anyone who is interested, the full article should be available on PubMed Central from 2018-06-04.
Yet another paper which identifies thyroid hormone as a possible treatment for something that is not classically thought of as hypothyroidism.
Nat Med. 2018 Jan;24(1):39-49. doi: 10.1038/nm.4447. Epub 2017 Dec 4.
Thyroid hormone inhibits lung fibrosis in mice by improving epithelial mitochondrial function.
Yu G1, Tzouvelekis A1,2, Wang R1, Herazo-Maya JD1, Ibarra GH1, Srivastava A1, de Castro JPW3,4, DeIuliis G1, Ahangari F1, Woolard T1, Aurelien N1, Arrojo E Drigo R5, Gan Y1, Graham M6, Liu X6, Homer RJ7,8, Scanlan TS9, Mannam P1, Lee PJ1, Herzog EL1, Bianco AC3, Kaminski N1.
Author information
1 Section of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
2 Division of Immunology, Biomedical Sciences Research Center "Alexander Fleming", Athens, Greece.
3 Division of Endocrinology/Metabolism, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
4 Biophysics Institute, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
5 The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory, La Jolla, California, USA.
6 CCMI Electron Microscopy Core Facility, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
7 Department of Pathology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
8 Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Service, VA Connecticut HealthCare System, West Haven, Connecticut, USA.
9 Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, Oregon, USA.
Abstract
Thyroid hormone (TH) is critical for the maintenance of cellular homeostasis during stress responses, but its role in lung fibrosis is unknown. Here we found that the activity and expression of iodothyronine deiodinase 2 (DIO2), an enzyme that activates TH, were higher in lungs from patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis than in control individuals and were correlated with disease severity. We also found that Dio2-knockout mice exhibited enhanced bleomycin-induced lung fibrosis. Aerosolized TH delivery increased survival and resolved fibrosis in two models of pulmonary fibrosis in mice (intratracheal bleomycin and inducible TGF-β1). Sobetirome, a TH mimetic, also blunted bleomycin-induced lung fibrosis. After bleomycin-induced injury, TH promoted mitochondrial biogenesis, improved mitochondrial bioenergetics and attenuated mitochondria-regulated apoptosis in alveolar epithelial cells both in vivo and in vitro. TH did not blunt fibrosis in Ppargc1a- or Pink1-knockout mice, suggesting dependence on these pathways. We conclude that the antifibrotic properties of TH are associated with protection of alveolar epithelial cells and restoration of mitochondrial function and that TH may thus represent a potential therapy for pulmonary fibrosis.
PMID: 29200204
PMCID: PMC5760280 [Available on 2018-06-04]
DOI: 10.1038/nm.4447