[Clinical and immunological aspects of early-stage rheumatoid arthritis]

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease that is characterized by a systemic inflammatory and destructive joint lesion that is manifested by the involvement of various organs and systems into the pathological process. Whether the variants of the course and outcomes of RA may be predicted early is the most important inadequately studied problem. HLA-DRB1* genotypes affect disease severity; however, different alleles encoding the identical amino acid sequence have a varying association with the disease and their combinations can differently increase the risk of RA. Total epitope (SE) is associated not only with the risk of RA as a whole, but also with the development of the severe course of the disease to a greater extent. A number of studies have demonstrated that if a patient has concurrently antibodies to cyclic citrullinated peptide (CCP) and rheumatoid factor, as well as HLA-DRB1 alleles, the likelihood of rapid X-ray progression is 10 times greater than that in a patient without these markers. The paper considers the course of early RA depending on the combined determination of immunological and immunogenetic markers (SE and CCP antibodies). Each of them makes a substantial contribution to the development of a destructive process in early RA, which necessitates the assessment of a combination of the factors.