MicroRNA-10b promotes arthritis development by disrupting CD4⁺ T cell subtypes

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an inflammation-involved disorder and features the disruption of CD4⁺ T lymphocytes. Herein, we describe that microRNA-10b-5p (miR-10b) promotes RA progression by disrupting the balance between subsets of CD4⁺ T cells. MiR-10b-deficient mice protected against collagen antibody-induced arthritis (CAIA) model. RNA sequencing results indicated that disordered genes in miR-10b^-/- CAIA model are closely associated with CD4⁺ T cells differentiation. Moreover, miR-10b mimics promoted Th1/Th17 and suppressed Th2/Treg cells differentiation, whereas miR-10b inhibitor induced contrary effects. In addition, GATA3 and PTEN was confirmed as two targets of miR-10b, and GATA3 siRNA could increase Th1 and reduce Th2 cells meanwhile PTEN siRNA could increase Th17 and decrease Treg cells. Furthermore, miR-10b inhibitor significantly ameliorated collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) development by attenuating the dysfunctional CD4⁺ T cell subpopulations. The present findings suggest that miR-10b could disrupt the balance of CD4⁺ T subsets, while suppressed miR-10b could attenuate the severity of experimental arthritis, which provided us a novel mechanistic and therapeutic insight into the RA.