Thirty-three patients with early peripheral synovitis were followed up for two to four years in order to study the relationship between fluctuations in rheumatoid factor (RF) levels and indices of clinical activity. Twenty-eight of these patients developed classical/definite rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Seventeen patients developed erosive disease of their hands and wrists and thirteen had a posi...

Thirty-three patients with early peripheral synovitis were followed up for two to four years in order to study the relationship between fluctuations in rheumatoid factor (RF) levels and indices of clinical activity. Twenty-eight of these patients developed classical/definite rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Seventeen patients developed erosive disease of their hands and wrists and thirteen had a posi...

OBJECTIVES To investigate differences in response to tumor necrosis factor inhibitor treatment (TNFi) in seropositive (rheumatoid factor positive; RF+) versus seronegative (RF-) patients with established RA as measured by the Health Assessment Questionnaire Disability Index (HAQ-DI) and pain. METHODS RA patients from an established RA cohort were studied according to rheumatoid factor (RF) st...

Background: Rheumatoid Factor (RF) occurs in 7090% of patients with established rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibody (Anti-CCP) detection may be used to confirm the diagnosis of RA in patients with uncharacterized chronic inflammatory arthritis. This study is an attempt to evaluate the role of RF and anti-CCP in the diagnosis and prognosis of rheumatoid arthriti...

Sir: We read with interest the two papers by Drs van de Laar and van der Korst on food intolerance in rheumatoid arthritis (RA).1 2 It appears from this extensive but short study of patients with seropositive RA that rheumatoid disease in a small subgroup is sensitive to dietary manipulation. Identification of these patients is, however, a problem. We have previously shown that significant gut ...

OBJECTIVE Two interferon regulatory factor 5 (IRF5) gene variants were examined for association with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS A total of 2300 patients with RA and 1836 controls were recruited from 2 independent RA studies in Sweden. One insertion-deletion polymorphism (CGGGG indel) and one single-nucleotide polymorphism (rs10488631) in the IRF5 gene were genotyped and analyzed withi...

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) has been associated with several autoantibodies, including antiperinuclear factor, anti-keratin antibodies, anti-filaggrin antibodies, and anti-Cyclic Citrullinated Peptide (anti-CCP) antibodies. Most studies found that anti-CCP antibodies are only detected in Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (JRA) patients with positive Rheumatoid Factor (RF). In our center we experiment...

INTRODUCTION Previous studies have provided inconsistent results on whether variants in the MBL2 gene, coding for the complement-activating mannan-binding lectin (MBL) protein, associate with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We re-evaluated this in context of the main environmental and genetic risk factors (smoking, HLA-DRB1 'shared epitope' (SE), PTPN22*620W), which predispose to rheumatoid factor (...

Total rheumatoid factor (RF) activity and individual RF isotypes were measured in 62 patients with rheumatic diseases. Retrospective analysis of available x rays showed an association between IgA RF and the occurrence of periarticular bone erosions in hands. In contrast, IgG RF and IgM RF did not show any significant association with erosions. Furthermore, a close correlation was observed betwe...

Sir: Winchester et al two decades ago proposed that IgG rheumatoid factor (RF) could be locally produced in plasma cells that line the synovium.' We conducted a short study looking at paired samples of synovial fluid (from the knee joint) and serum from patients with definite rheumatoid arthritis to determine if the production of IgG RF is localised in the synovial fluid. Thirty six serum sampl...