Journal of Thyroid Research

Volume 2013 (2013), Article ID 312104, 5 pages

http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/312104

Review Article

Thyroid Hormone and Tissue Repair: New Tricks for an Old Hormone?

Iordanis Mourouzis, Efstathia Politi, and Constantinos Pantos

Department of Pharmacology, University of Athens, 75 Mikras Asias Avenue, Goudi, 11527 Athens, Greece

Received 1 November 2012; Accepted 26 January 2013

Academic Editor: Giorgio Iervasi

Copyright © 2013 Iordanis Mourouzis et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract.

Although the role of thyroid hormone during embryonic development has long been recognized, its role later in adult life remains largely unknown. However, several lines of evidence show that thyroid hormone is crucial to the response to stress and to poststress recovery and repair. Along this line, TH administration in almost every tissue resulted in tissue repair after various injuries including ischemia, chemical insults, induction of inflammation, or exposure to radiation. This novel action may be of therapeutic relevance, and thyroid hormone may constitute a paradigm for pharmacologic-induced tissue repair/regeneration.

1. Introduction

Although the role of thyroid hormone (TH) during development has long been recognized, its role later in adult life remains largely unknown [1]. A growing body of evidence reveals that thyroid hormone may be a major player for the response to stress and its presence crucial to poststress adaptation and recovery. Thus, thyroid hormone is now thought to have a reparative action later in adult life, and this has been recently documented in several studies; see Table 1.

Table 1: Accumulating experimental evidence shows that thyroid hormone may play a critical role for the repair after injury in several tissues and organs.

Study
Type of treatment
Tissue
Type of injury
Outcome

Shulga et al.

2009 [18]
Treatment with T4 after injury
Mouse hippocambal slices
Mechanical injury
Increased number of neurons, reduced caspase-3 activation, and increased axonal regeneration

Hiroi et al. 2006 [19]
Treatment with T4 after ischemia
Mouse central nervous system
Transient focal ischemia
Reduced cerebral infarct volume, and improved neurological deficit score

Fernandez et al. 2004 [20]
Treatment with T4 after injury
Rat nervous system
Chronic demyelinating inflammatory disease
Enhancement of remyelination

Papakostas et al. 2009 [21]
Treatment with T3 after injury
Rat sciatic nerve
Nerve transection
Increased recovery of sensory function

Panaite and Barackat-Walter 2010 [22]
Treatment with T3 after injury
Rat sciatic nerve
Nerve transection
Increased number of regenerated axons, improved muscle reinnervation

Fernández et al.

2007 [23]
Pretreatment with T3
Rat Liver
Ischemia-reperfusion
Reduced injury (serum AST and ALT levels)

Ferreyra et al. 2009 [24]
Pretreatment with T3
Rat kidney
Ischemia-reperfusion
Reduced proteinuria

Erkan et al. 2003 [25]

Pretreatment with T4
Rabbit proximal tubule cells
Anoxia reoxygenation
Better preservation of cellular structure

Sutter et al. 1988 [26]
Treatment with T4 after ischemia
Rat kidney
Ischemia-reperfusion
Improved kidney function, preserved cellular morphology

Verga Falzacappa et al. 2011 [27]
Contemporary T3 treatment
Mouse pancreas
Streptozocin-induced toxicity
Increased number, shape, and dimension of islets, increased insulin and glucagon levels

Verga Falzacappa et al. 2012 [28]
Contemporary T3 treatment
Rat ovarian granulosa cells
Chemotherapy induced toxicity
Increased number of survived cells, reduced apoptosis

Bhargava et al. 2008 [29]
Pretreatment with T3
Rat lung
Hyperoxia injury
Increased alveolar fluid clearance

Pantos et al. 2011 [16]
Treatment with T3 after ischemia
Rat heart
Ischemia-reperfusion
Increased recovery of function, reduced injury and apoptosis

Pantos et al. 2009 [17]
Treatment with T3 after ischemia
Rat heart
Ischemia-reperfusion
Increased recovery of function, reduced injury

Pantos et al. 2002 [30]
Pretreatment with T4
Rat heart
Ischemia-reperfusion
Increased recovery of function

Kuzman et al. 2005 [31]
Pretreatment with T3
Neonatal rat cardiomyocytes
Serum starvation
Increased cell viability, reduced apoptosis

Chen et al. 2008 [32]
Treatment with T3 after infarction
Rat heart
Acute myocardial infarction
Improved LV function, reduced apoptosis

Dentice et al. 2010 [33]
Treatment with T3 after injury
Mouse skeletal muscle
Mechanical injury
Improved muscle regeneration

Marsili et al. 2011 [34]
Induction of D2-increased T3
Mouse skeletal muscle
Skeletal muscle injury
Improved muscle regeneration

Fukuyama et al. 2006 [35]
Treatment with T3 after injury
Rat carotid artery
Mechanical injury
Attenuation of VSMC proliferation and neointimal formation

Safer et al. 2004 [36]
Treatment with T3 after injury
Mouse skin
Wound
Accelerated wound healing, increased keratinocyte proliferation

Kassem et al. 2012 [37]
Local T3 treatment
Guinea pig skin
Wound
Reduction in the wound surface area

2. Adaptation to Environmental Stress and Species Evolution: The Critical Role of Thyroid Hormone

The most important challenge that living organisms faced during species evolution was the ability to adapt to the transition from the aquatic environment, a condition of low oxygen, to the ground, an oxygen-rich state. This required a gene programming that would enable organ protection and remodeling during this transition. Interestingly, studies on amphibians revealed that thyroid-hormone-regulated gene programming is critical for the metamorphosis of tadpoles into juvenile frogs [2]. Several studies have shown that the morphological and functional changes of metamorphosis are the result of alterations in the transcription of specific sets of genes induced by TH and TH alterations can lead to developmental failures [3–6].

3. Thyroid Hormone and Stress Response: An Evolutionary Conserved Mechanism

The potential role of thyroid hormone in stress response has been, until now, underestimated. However, thyroid hormone signaling is altered during various stressful stimuli and thyroid hormone is crucial to poststress recovery and injury repair [7–9]. Interestingly, the importance of thyroid hormone for stress response has been documented in several species ranging from fish to humans [10]. Thus, exposure of air-breathing perch to water-born kerosene resulted in low T3 and unfavorable metabolic changes, while the administration of TH reversed this response [11]. Along this line, cold stunning Kemp’s ridley sea turtles had undetectable levels of thyroid hormone, and recovery was observed only in those who recovered thyroid hormone levels in blood [12]. Interestingly, a similar response is also observed in humans. In fact, after an index event, such as myocardial infarction, T3 levels significantly drop and lower levels of T3 are associated with high mortality [13, 14]. Furthermore, T3 levels are strongly correlated to early and late recovery of cardiac function, with T3 levels at 6 months to be an independent predictor of the recovery of the myocardium [15]. In fact, patients who spontaneously recover T3 levels in plasma after myocardial infarction are those with markedly improved cardiac functional recovery [15]. These observations provide clear evidence that thyroid-hormone-regulated mechanisms may be evolutionary conserved and are crucial to the response to stress and poststress recovery and tissue repair [11]. Along this line, several studies have demonstrated the reparative action of thyroid hormone. We have recently shown that T3 at a dose which had no effect on noninjured myocardium significantly limited apoptosis in the ischemic myocardium and improved postischemic function in an isolated rat heart model of ischemia-reperfusion. This effect was due to the suppression of the ischemia-reperfusion-induced activation of the proapoptotic p38 MAPK [16, 17] as shown in, Figure 1.

(a)

(b)

Figure 1: Langendorff recordings of left ventricular pressure (LVP) from isolated rat hearts subjected to zero-flow global ischemia followed by reperfusion (a) and hearts subjected only to stabilization (b). Triiodothyronine (T3) administration at reperfusion improves postischemic recovery of function, whereas T3 during stabilization does not affect contractile function.

4. Thyroid Hormone: The “Black Box of Repair?”

Accumulating experimental evidence shows that thyroid hormone may play a critical role in the repair after injury in almost every tissue and organ as shown in Table 1. This probably implies that organisms may have a common mechanism of repair which may be regulated by thyroid hormone and has been established during evolution. Thus, thyroid hormone was shown to control DNA repair after irradiation-induced damage in mouse intestine [38]. A single dose of T3 in rats significantly diminished hepatocellular injury induced by ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) when given 48 h before the I/R protocol. This effect was mediated by a T3 transient oxidative stress, and thus, it was abrogated by the administration of antioxidant N-acetyl-cysteine [23]. Thyroxine was cytoprotective in toxic and ischemic injury in kidney [24, 26]. Thus, T3 administration 24 h prior to renal ischemia could precondition against ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury. This was evident by a marked decrease in I/R-induced proteinuria. T3 treatment also improved lipid peroxidation biomarkers and increased antioxidant enzymes [24]. In another study, T4 administration immediately or 24 h after ischemia resulted in higher Inulin clearance and preserved cellular integrity [26]. In accordance with these observations in animal models, T4 was shown to be cytoprotective, in a cellular model of reoxygenation injury in isolated proximal tubule cells [25]. Such evidence may provide an explanation to the clinical observation that low T3 has been associated with increased mortality in hemodialyzed patients [39]. T3 treatment prevented streptozocin-induced toxic injury in pancreatic cells. This effect was associated with an increased activation of the prosurvival Akt signaling [27]. Similarly, T3 was shown to improve function and survival of rat pancreatic islets in in vitro cell cultures [40]. Moreover, T3 was found to preserve ovarian granulose cells exposed to paclitaxel. In fact, T3 significantly reduced the paclitaxel-induced cell injury via downregulation of caspase3 and Bax and upregulation of Bcl2 [28]. T3 pretreatment in rats instilled with an isosmolar 5% albumin solution resulted in the upregulation of alveolar epithelial fluid clearance [41]. T3 was also shown not only to stimulate alveolar fluid clearance in normal but also in hypoxia-injured lungs [29]. The administration of T3 attenuated neointimal formation after balloon injury of carotid artery [35]. Thyroid hormone enhanced transected axonal regeneration and muscle reinnervation following rat sciatic nerve injury [22] and improved recovery of sensory function [21]. Similarly, thyroid hormone was shown to be essential for muscle regeneration after injury [33, 34]. Thyroid hormone promoted the survival of injured neurons [18] and enhanced remyelination in demyelinating inflammatory disease [20]. Thyroid hormone has also been shown to accelerate wound healing in mice and guinea pigs [36, 37].

5. Conclusions

Thyroid hormone appears to be a common player for the organ development and response to stress. Thyroid hormone was crucial for species evolution, and thyroid-hormone-regulated mechanisms have been evolutionary conserved and play an important role early during development. However, recent research has revealed that thyroid hormone has a reparative role later in adult life. This novel action may be of therapeutic relevance, and thyroid hormone may constitute a paradigm for pharmacologic induced tissue repair/regeneration.

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