Traditional Chinese medicine formula Bi-Qi capsule alleviates rheumatoid arthritis-induced inflammation, synovial hyperplasia, and cartilage destruction in rats

Table 3 Pathological feature of synovial membranes

Group (n = 8)	Neutrophil infiltration	Lymphocyte infiltration	Plasma cell infiltration	Synovial cell proliferation	Proliferation of fibrous tissue
Healthy	0	0	0	0	0
Arthritic	1.00 ± 0.46	1.63 ± 0.35	1.81 ± 0.26	1.69 ± 0.37	1.38 ± 0.44
BQ high dose	0.56 ± 0.32	1.00 ± 0.53^*	1.00 ± 0.53^**	1.19 ± 0.26	0.94 ± 0.42
BQ moderate dose	0.44 ± 0.32^*	0.56 ± 0.32^***	0.69 ± 0.26^****	1.13 ± 0.52^*	0.75 ± 0.27^{*, &}
MTX	0.50 ± 0.38	1.06 ± 0.42	0.75 ± 0.38^****	0.94 ± 0.32^**	1.31 ± 0.37

Data are presented as mean ± SD
BQ Bi-Qi capsule, MTX methotrexate
Significant effect of treatment compared to arthritic group, *P < 0.05, ^**P < 0.01, ^***P < 0.001, ^****P < 0.0001; compared to MTX-group, ^&P < 0.05