Pretreatment with interleukin-6 small interfering RNA can improve the survival rate of polymicrobial cecal ligation and puncture mice by down regulating interleukin-6 production.

Interleukin-6 (IL-6) is considered to be an early marker of severe sepsis that is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Therefore, we pretreated male ICR mice with IL-6 small interfering RNA (siRNA) before cecal ligation and puncture (CLP) and observed the changes in their survival in response to down regulation of IL-6, as well as the role of Th subsets during sepsis. In addition, sham and CLP operated mice were sacrificed at different time points to determine the serum IL-6 levels during early and late sepsis. IL-6 siRNA pretreated septic mice showed markedly extended survival (23.3%) up to 10 days and significantly reduced serum IL-6 levels at day 5 (209.90 ± 0.50 pg/ml; P<0.0001) when compared to CLP mice at day 1. Furthermore, IL-6 mRNA and protein were highly expressed during early sepsis in CLP mice at day 1 and mRNA was not detected in IL-6 siRNA treated CLP mice at days 1 or 5 and serum level of IL-6 was also decreased significantly (P<0.01). In addition, the mRNA expression of C5aR, ROR-γt, PU.1 and protein expression of IL-17 were high at day 5 in IL-6 siRNA treated mice. Taken together, the results of the present study demonstrate that pretreatment with IL-6 siRNA improved CLP induced septic mice survival. Furthermore, the IL-6 level was down-regulated and the transcription factors ROR-γt and PU.1 were up-regulated by IL-6 siRNA at late sepsis. The results presented herein also suggest that IL-6 siRNA could be a potential molecular therapeutic strategy for the treatment of sepsis.