Enrichment of extracellular DNA from the cultivation medium of human peripheral blood mononuclears with genomic CpG rich fragments results in increased cell production of IL-6 and TNF-a via activation of the NF-kB signaling pathway

Previously, it was found that blood plasma extracellular DNA (ecDNA) of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is enriched with CpG-rich genomic DNA fragments, which contain TLR9 ligands (Veiko et al., 2006). In this study we have demonstrated that ecDNA of a RA patient and model fragments added to a cultivation medium of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of healthy donors stimulate expression of genes for the TLR9–MyD88–NF-kB signaling pathway; this leads to a significant increase in concentrations of the proinflammatory cytokines IL-6 and TNF-a in the cultivation medium. Human genomic DNA non-enriched with the CpG sequences did not stimulate IL-6 and TNF-a synthesis in PBMC. A scheme explaining the potential role ecDNA in the induction and maintenance of increased levels of the proinflammatory cytokines under conditions damaging the human cells has been proposed.