OBJECTIVES To explore the correlation of serum IgG4 (sIgG4) with clinical manifestations or therapeutic response in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS Consecutive 136 RA patients were recruited and followed up at regular interval. SIgG4 was detected by immunonephelometry. Serial synovial tissue sections from 46 RA patients were stained immunohistochemically for IgG4. RESULTS Forty-six perce...

The study presents the results of predicting role of anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibodies in rheumatoid arthritis, compared to rheumatoid factor. 32 patients with rheumatoid arthritis were identified from a retrospective chart review. The results of our study show that presence of the rheumatoid factor has less diagnostic and prognostic significance than the anti-cyclic citrullinated pe...

BACKGROUND Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune inflammatory disease affecting the joints. Anti-citrullinated protein antibodies (ACPA) are frequently found in RA. Previous studies identified a citrullinated epitope in cartilage proteoglycan (PG) aggrecan that elicited pro-inflammatory cytokine production by RA T cells. We recently reported the presence of ACPA-reactive (citrullinated) PG...

Antibodies directed to the Sa antigen are highly specific for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and can be detected in approximately 40% of RA sera. The antigen, a doublet of protein bands of about 50 kDa, is present in placenta and in RA synovial tissue. Although it has been stated that the Sa antigen is citrullinated vimentin, experimental proof for this claim has never been published. In this study,...

UNLABELLED An association between oral disease/periodontitis and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has been considered since the early 1820s. The early treatment was tooth eradication. Epidemiological studies suggest that the prevalence of RA and periodontitis may be similar and about 5% of the population are aged 50 years or older. RA is considered as an autoimmune disease whereas periodontitis has an...

INTRODUCTION Anti-citrullinated peptide antibodies are found in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients with HLA-DRβ chains encoding the shared epitope (SE) sequence. Citrullination increases self-antigen immunogenicity, through increased binding affinity to SE-containing HLA-DR molecules. To characterise T-cell autoreactivity towards citrullinated self-epitopes, we profiled responses of SE+ healthy...

INTRODUCTION We have previously identified endogenously citrullinated peptides derived from fibrinogen in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) synovial tissues. In this study, we have investigated the auto-antigenicity of four of those citrullinated peptides, and explored their feasibility to target anti-citrullinated protein/peptide antibodies (ACPA). METHODS The autoantigenic potential of the fibrinog...

We applied nonparametric quantitative trait linkage analysis to two rheumatoid arthritis quantitative phenotypes, IgM rheumatoid factor (RF) and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide autoantibody titer measurements, using 5700 genome-wide Illumina single-nucleotide polymorphism genotypes on 658 Caucasian North American Rheumatoid Arthritis Consortium families. Peak LOD scores for both quantitative ...

BACKGROUND To determine the prevalence and significance of anti-citrullinated vimentin and anti-citrullinated type II collagen antibodies and elucidate their role in the disease process of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). METHODS Sera were obtained from 95 patients with various subtypes of JIA, 19 systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients, and 10 healthy children. Antibodies were measur...

Some binary quadratic operads are endowed with anticyclic structures and their characteristic functions as anticyclic operads are determined, or conjectured in one case. AMS Classification 18D50; 05E05