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Synovial lymphocytes indicate "bacterial" agents may cause some cases of rheumatoid arthritis
1Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Objective:
To evaluate synovial lymphocyte response data from "rheumatoid" patients, to determine if "bacterial" antigens caused significant stimulation.
Methods:
Two-tailed t tests, analysis of variance, and metaanalysis were applied to 3H-thymidine uptake triplicate/quadruplicate counts, resulting from microbiological antigen stimulation of synovial fluid lymphocytes.
Results:
In 5 patients with rheumatoid arthritis, maximal synovial lymphocyte responses to chlamydial (in 3) and salmonella (in 2) antigens were significantly greater than to other tested antigens.
Conclusion:
The data, associated with other published data from similar studies, suggest that Chlamydia and pathogenic Enterobacteriaceae may be etiologically related to the arthritis of some patients with rheumatoid arthritis.