INTRODUCTION/OBJECTIVE To characterize a population of patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) according to laboratory aspects, comparing it with other similar cohorts. METHODS Data presented are part of a prospective incident cohort study that evaluated 65 patients with early RA, followed for 36 months from the diagnosis at Early Rheumatoid Arthritis Clinic of Hospital Universitário de...

rheumatoid factors (rf) are autoantibodies with specificity for the fc portion of human igg. production of rf is a characteristic feature of rheumatoid arthritis (ra) and is detectable in high titer in about 90% of these patients. in this study, we measured total igm, iga, igmrf and igarf in serum and synovial fluid of 45 ra patients by elisa and the results were compared with those obtained by...

INTRODUCTION Rituximab (RTX) therapy of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) exhibits enhanced effectiveness in seropositive patients. Using patient sera, we tested if this improved efficacy was associated with enhanced RTX mediated complement-dependent cytotoxicity (RTX-CDC). METHODS We developed an in vitro assay for RTX-CDC using patient sera and the Daudi human B cell line. Using propidium iodide up...

OBJECTIVES Antiperinuclear factor (APF), antikeratin antibodies (AKA), and anti-RA 33 antibodies are currently considered to be good markers for the diagnosis of adult rheumatoid arthritis with or without rheumatoid factor (RF). The prevalence of these markers was retrospectively reviewed in children with juvenile chronic arthritis (JCA) to determine whether they were associated with specific f...

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a chronic, inflammatory disease, frequently associated with joint destruction. The aim is this clinical observation was to contribute to warm needle acupuncture treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. We studied the before and after warm needle acupuncture and herbal medicine treatment of rheumatoid arthritis patient’s Rheumatoid Factor (RF), Erythrocyte Sedimentation Ra...

Complement-mediated lysis of sheep erythrocytes coated with optimal concentrations of rabbit IgG hemolysin was inhibited by euglobulin fractions from the sera of patients with seropositive rheumatoid arthritis. That this was due to direct interaction with the IgG coat on the red cell rather than a nonspecific reaction with complement in the fluid phase was confirmed by controls using cells coat...

BACKGROUND Anti-filaggrin antibodies (AFA) are among the most specific antibodies for rheumatoid arthritis, so procedures for their detection should be included in early biological diagnoses. AFA can be detected by indirect immunofluorescence (anti-keratin antibodies, AKA) or by new enzyme immunoassays (EIA). Their comparative performance needs to be established. OBJECTIVE To compare these te...

MRL/l mice spontaneously develop an arthritis very similar in many respects to human rheumatoid arthritis. A detailed morphologic and serologic analysis of this disease revealed the following: (a) a 75% incidence of synovial and periarticular inflammation, very similar to human rheumatoid arthritis, in 5-6 mo-old females, (b) close associations between presence of joint inflammation and subsyno...

The interference of IgM-class rheumatoid factor (RF) in the solid-phase radioimmunoassay (RIA) of rubella virus IgM antibodies was studied. Acute rubella infections did not significantly activate RF. False-positive rubella antibody results were obtained, however, when patients with raised RF levels were tested. If a low rubella IgG antibody titre was present, a high level of RF was required to ...

Objective: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a polyarticular and systemic chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease, occurring throughout the world. The aim of the present study is to observe the role of anti-CCP antibody and Rheumatoid Factor (RF) assay in diagnosing patients of rheumatoid arthritis in north-eastern part of India, in the state of Assam and also to evaluate the individual and combined...