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* Inflammation and Immunology, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan;
Institute of Bio-Response Informatics, Kyoto, Japan;
Department of Medical Biochemistry, Kobe Pharmaceutical University, Kobe, Japan;
Department of Clinical Pharmaceutics, Gifu Pharmaceutical University, Gifu, Japan; and
¶ Department of Orthopaedics, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kyoto
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is characterized by massive synovial proliferation, angiogenesis, subintimal infiltration of inflammatory cells and the production of cytokines such as TNF-
and IL-6. Allograft inflammatory factor-1 (AIF-1) has been identified in chronic rejection of rat cardiac allografts as well as tissue inflammation in various autoimmune diseases. AIF-1 is thought to play an important role in chronic immune inflammatory processes, especially those involving macrophages. In the current work, we examined the expression of AIF-1 in synovial tissues and measured AIF-1 in synovial fluid (SF) derived from patients with either RA or osteoarthritis (OA). We also examined the proliferation of synovial cells and induction of IL-6 following AIF-1 stimulation. Immunohistochemical staining showed that AIF-1 was strongly expressed in infiltrating mononuclear cells and synovial fibroblasts in RA compared with OA. Western blot analysis and semiquantitative RT-PCR analysis demonstrated that synovial expression of AIF-1 in RA was significantly greater than the expression in OA. AIF-1 induced the proliferation of cultured synovial cells in a dose-dependent manner and increased the IL-6 production of synovial fibroblasts and PBMC. The levels of AIF-1 protein were higher in synovial fluid from patients with RA compared with patients with OA (p < 0.05). Furthermore, the concentration of AIF-1 significantly correlated with the IL-6 concentration (r = 0.618, p < 0.01). These findings suggest that AIF-1 is closely associated with the pathogenesis of RA and is a novel member of the cytokine network involved in the immunological processes underlying RA.
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1 Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Yutaka Kawahito, Inflammation and Immunology, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, 465 Kajii-cho, Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan. E-mail address: kawahity{at}koto.kpu-m.ac.jp
2 Abbreviations used in this paper: RA, rheumatoid arthritis; AIF-1, allograft inflammatory factor-1; OA, osteoarthritis; SF, synovial fluid.
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