T-cell receptor V-gene usage in synovial fluid and synovial tissue from RA patients

The question of whether there is a preferential use of certain V genes in T cells entering an inflamed joint has hitherto been studied mainly using unfractionated cells from synovial fluid and tissue respectively, and no clear answer to the question has yet been provided. Concomitantly, evidence has been provided that the use of V genes may differ considerably between CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, and consequently that detection of biased V-gene expression within an inflammatory lesion may require separate analysis of the two T-cell subsets. In this paper we have therefore studied T-cell receptor V-gene expression in rheumatoid arthritis by means of double stainings of synovial fluid and blood for available anti-TCR monoclonal antibodies and antibodies to CD4 and CD8, respectively. Double stainings were also performed with anti-TCR antibodies and antibodies to activation markers HLA-DR and IL-2R. A certain bias towards the preferential use of certain V genes was seen particularly in the synovial fluid samples within both the CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell populations, but no uniform pattern was evident among the 35 patients investigated.