Correlation between protein expression profiling of inflammation and bone metabolism in rheumatoid arthritis patients

In patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), osteoarthrosis significantly reduces self-perception. However, the intrinsic relationship between bone metabolism and SPP and cell activity at the molecular level remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between RA bone metabolic indicators and immune inflammation-related proteins.

A total of 30 patients with RA and 30 healthy controls were recruited. Four bone metabolism measures and nine proteins expression measures were collected from RA patients and healthy controls. Spearman Correlation Analysis and Logistic-regression Analysis were adopted for associations between bone metabolism and proteins.

We screened and verified 3 key proteins, namely interleukin-11 (IL-11), interleukin-17 (IL-17) and programmed cell death-2 (PD-L2) related to immunity and inflammation through microarray analysis. Levels of IL-2, IL-5, IL-11, IL-17, CTLA4, TNF-β were higher in RA patients than in the control group (P<0.05), meanwhile, the levels of IL-8, PD-L2, TNF-β and B7-2 were low in RA patients (P>0.05).The results of Spearman Correlation Test suggested that sharp score was positively correlated with age, CCP was positively correlated with RF, SDS score was positively correlated with RF, IL-17 was positively correlated with CCP, BGP was positively correlated with BALP, RANKL was positively correlated with BALP, VAS score was negatively correlated with CRP, TCM score was negatively correlated with SF-36 score.

BALP, BGP, OPG, RANKL were strongly associated with immune inflammation-related proteins and poor SPP in RA patients, which can be used to predict poor SPP in RA patients, although the underlying mechanisms need to be further explored.