BACKGROUND To measure circulating anti-citrullinated peptide antibodies (ACPA) and cytokines pre- and 6 months post-therapy as a strategy to predict and optimize responses to traditional disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) in early RA, which is an unmet need in developing countries. PATIENTS AND METHODS A cohort of 140 predominantly (88.5 %) black female South African patients with...

OBJECTIVES To investigate (1) whether working in cold environment (WCE) is associated with an increased risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA) (overall), anticitrullinated protein antibody (ACPA)-positive RA and ACPA-negative RA and (2) whether WCE interacts with occupational physical workload in conferring RA risk. METHODS Data from the Swedish population-based case-control study Epide...

Background Environmental factors play a prominent role in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) aetiology. Shift work has previously been associated with increased RA risk in females. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential association, including a dose-response association, between permanent night shift work, rotating shift work and day-oriented shift work and risk of developing anticitrull...

BACKGROUND Antibodies against carbamylated proteins (anti-CarP) have been recently identified in the sera of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The objective of the study was to evaluate the prevalence, sensitivity and specificity of anti-CarP compared to anti-citrullinated peptide antibodies (ACPA) and rheumatoid factor (RF), replicating the existing data in a large cohort of Italian pat...

BACKGROUND Autoantibodies such as anti-citrullinated protein antibodies (ACPA) are major risk factors for articular bone destruction from the earliest phases of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The aim of the current study was to determine whether RA-associated autoantibodies also impact on systemic bone loss in patients with early disease. METHODS Systemic bone mineral density (BMD) was measured i...

INTRODUCTION The severity of joint damage progression in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is heritable. Several genetic variants have been identified, but together explain only part of the total genetic effect. Variants in Interleukin-6 (IL-6), Interleukin-10 (IL-10), C5-TRAF1, and Fc-receptor-like-3 (FCRL3) have been described to associate with radiographic progression, but results of different studi...

OBJECTIVE To group HLA-DRB1 alleles based on acid-base properties of amino acids at positions 13, 70 and 71 and analyse their association with the presence of anticitrullinated peptide antibodies (ACPA) and structural progression in 2 cohorts of early rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS Patients with RA (N=612) from ESPOIR cohort and from EAC cohort (n=624) were genotyped for HLA-DRB1 alleles....