OBJECTIVE To provide a table indicating the risk for developing anti citrullinated protein antibody (ACPA) positive rheumatoid arthritis (RA) according to one's HLA-DRB1 genotype. METHODS We HLA-DRB1 genotyped 857 patients with ACPA positive RA and 2178 controls from South Eastern and Eastern France and calculated Odds Ratios (OR) for developing RA for 106 of 132 possible genotypes accounting...

BACKGROUND To investigate the associations between HLA-DRB1 shared epitope (SE) alleles and rheumatoid arthritis in subsets of rheumatoid arthritis defined by autoantibodies in three Asian populations from Malaysia. METHODS 1,079 rheumatoid arthritis patients and 1,470 healthy controls were included in the study. Levels of antibodies to citrullinated proteins (ACPA) and rheumatoid factors wer...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the predictive value of TNFRII 196R, PTPN22 1858T and HLA-shared epitope (SE) alleles, RFs and anti-citrullinated protein antibodies (ACPAs) for RA diagnosis in a cohort of patients with very early arthritis. METHODS We followed up 284 patients who had swelling of at least two joints that had persisted for longer than 4 weeks but had been evolving for <6 months. At 2 yr...

BACKGROUND Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an inflammatory debilitating disease that affects the joints in the early and productive phases of an individual's life. Several cytokines have been linked to the disease pathogenesis and are known to contribute to the inflammatory state characteristic of RA. The participation of type I interferon (IFN) in the pathogenesis of the disease has been already ...

INTRODUCTION Mast cells have been implicated to play a functional role in arthritis, especially in autoantibody-positive disease. Among the cytokines involved in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), IL-17 is an important inflammatory mediator. Recent data suggest that the synovial mast cell is a main producer of IL-17, although T cells have also been implicated as prominent IL-17 producers as well. We ai...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between serum infliximab (IFX) levels and changes of RF and ACPA levels in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) [Promonitor® IFX R1 (version 2) (Progenika Biopharma, Spain)] were used to measure drug levels and antidrug-antibodies (ADAb) in IFX RA-treated patients (n=19)...

Fear memory and learning cause behavioural patterns such as fight or flight responses, which increase survival probability, but unfit processing of fear memory and learning can lead to maladaptive behaviours and maladies such as phobias, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and anxiety disorders. The growing prevalence of these maladies shows the need to quest novel methods for their treatment...