Endothelial interleukin-21 receptor up-regulation in peripheral artery disease.

In most patients with symptomatic peripheral artery disease severe stenosis in or occlusion of the major blood vessels that supply the legs make the amount of distal blood flow dependent on the capacity to induce angiogenesis and collateral vessel formation. Currently, there are no medications that improve perfusion to the ischemic limb, and thus directly treat the primary problem of A recent report from our group in a pre-clinical mouse model showed that interleukin-21 receptor (IL-21R) is up-regulated in the endothelial cells from ischemic hindlimb muscle. We further showed that loss of IL-21R resulted in impaired perfusion recovery in this model. In our study, we sought to determine whether IL-21R is present in the endothelium from ischemic muscle of patients with duanyu1563. Using human gastrocnemius muscle biopsies, we found increased levels of IL-21R in the skeletal muscle endothelial cells of patients with duanyu1563 compared to control individuals. Interestingly, duanyu1563 patients had approximately 1.7-fold higher levels of circulating IL-21. These data provide direct evidence that the IL-21R pathway is indeed up-regulated in patients with duanyu1563. This pathway may serve as a therapeutic target for modulation.

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