How Rheumatoid Arthritis Spreads... | Arthritis Information
November 10, 2009 — Cells surrounding joints affected by rheumatoid arthritis may spread the disease to other joints by traveling through blood vessels, according to a new study.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a progressive disease that causes joint inflammation and destruction. Researchers say initially the disease starts out in just a few joints but soon spreads to other joints in the body.
Until now, the method of how the disease spreads from joint to joint was unknown. But a study in Nature Medicine suggests that cells called synovial fibroblasts may be to blame.
The cells, which are present in lining of the joints, are already implicated in the cartilage destruction associated with rheumatoid arthritis.
In the study, researchers implanted healthy human cartilage tissue plus synovial fibroblasts from people with rheumatoid arthritis into one side of lab mice. The opposite side was injected with healthy cartilage without the diseased fibroblasts.
After 60 days, the results showed that synovial fibroblasts had actively moved from one side of the mice's body to the other via blood vessels and were already causing cartilage damage.
Researcher Stephanie Lefevre of the department of internal medicine and rheumatology at the Kerckhoff-Clinic, Bad Nauheim, Germany, and colleagues say the study supports the notion that the spread of rheumatoid arthritis between joints is at least partially due to the migration of affected synovial fibroblasts through the bloodstream.
SOURCES:
Lefevre, S. Nature Medicine, Nov. 8, 2009, advance online publication.
News release, Nature Journals.
[QUOTE=SnowOwl]Makes sense, but so much about what happens in the body and especially in disease course may seem counterintuitive, it's refreshing when something is the logical course. Thanks Lynn.
...I always feel so sorry for the poor mice. I know mouse models are valuable, but still, poor sore mice. I hope they get extra treats and the nicest fluffiest nesting materials for all they do for us in science.
[/QUOTE]
You're welcome
In the labs my daughter's have worked in, the mice were always well taken care of. There were certain protocols that had to be followed.
I was just thinking the same thing snow.... I hope the poor achy mice get a few oreo's from time to time. Oreo's make everyone feel better.Pretty interesting but will it lead to a cure? That's all I want. Thanks for the article Lynn.
Little mouse sized oreos
[QUOTE=LinB]Pretty interesting but will it lead to a cure? That's all I want. Thanks for the article Lynn.
Little mouse sized oreos [/QUOTE]
any time we learn more about the mechanisms we get closer to a cureI realize that Buckeye, I just wish that there was a site or scientific area where all of these discoveries were outlined and an analysis posted by scientists. There's research occuring in many countries at the same times, but is there one central area where the findings are correlated, discussed by scientists, analyzed and posted on the web, etc? Are they really aware of one another's studies, all of the time? I know that many of the research sites are informationally linked but I wonder about all of them. One small occurance in a research lab in Italy may be the answer but it wasn't linked to all of the other research and it was missed. It would be an interesting read. Lindy
LinB2009-11-11 12:13:52Personally, I wish they would stop using animals for these research experiments and use prisoners instead. It might make would-be felons think twice before committing a crime.......and it would protect the little mice. luckily its a lot easier to link things today than it used to be...hopefully our researchers use the many scientific conferences to learn from each other. When I was in college working for a biochemist one of my jobs was to pull articles from dozens of scientific journals. I was provided key words to look for . He was researching cystic fibrosis
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