The concentration of kynurenine has been measured in the serum of patients with rheumatoid arthritis and in a control group. The mean serum concentration was 2.27 +/- 0.688 mug/ml for patients with rheumatoid arthritis and 2.95 +/- 0.825 mug/ml for the control group.KYNURENINE: creatinine clearance ratios were higher in the rheumatoid arthritis than in the control group. These data suggest that...

INTRODUCTION In the last three decades numerous epidemiologic studies have shown the correlation between risk factors and cardiovascular diseases. Clinical research has proven that rheumatoid arthritis patients (RA) have higher prevalence of classical risk factors in relation to general population, and over the last few years there has been an emphasis on some new risk factors which can contrib...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic inflammatory autoimmune disease, characterized by chronic, erosive polyarthritis and by the presence of various autoantibodies in serum and synovial fluid. Since rheumatoid factor (RF) was first described, a number of other autoantibodies have been discovered in RA patients. The autoantigens recognized by these autoantibodies include cartilage components,...

There has been considerable interest in the role of environmental factors and the induction of autoimmunity and the ways by which they facilitate loss of tolerance. Clearly both genetic and environmental factors are incriminated, as evidenced by the lack of concordance in identical twins and the relatively recent identification of the shared epitope in rheumatoid arthritis. In this issue a new ...

We describe seven children with subcutaneous rheumatoid nodules who had no clinical evidence of rheumatoid arthritis. Only one girl was seropositive for antinuclear factors and had a slightly raised erythrocyte sedimentation rate. Clinical aspects, risks for developing rheumatoid arthritis, and treatment of this entity are discussed.

The occurrence of 1gM (= /32m)-globulins capable of reacting with IgG (= 7S-y)-globulin, the socalled rheumatoid factors, is not restricted to rheumatoid arthritis, but has been reported in a variety of conditions unrelated to the collagen diseases. The importance of these "false positive" reactions lies in the possibility of obtaining more information about the origin of the rheumatoid factors...