Soluble Fas ligand in the joints of patients with rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis

✍ Scribed by Hideo Hashimoto; Masato Tanaka; Takashi Suda; Tetsuya Tomita; Kenji Hayashida; Eiji Takeuchi; Motoharu Kaneko; Hiroshi Takano; Shigekazu Nagata; Takahiro Ochi

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 718 KB
• Volume: 41
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0004-3591
• DOI: 10.1002/1529-0131(199804)41:4<657::aid-art12>3.0.co;2-n

✦ Synopsis

Objective. To investigate the expression and function of Fas ligand (FasL),which can be in a membranebound or soluble form, in the joints of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and osteoarthritis (OA).

Methods. The concentration of soluble FasL (sFasL) in serum and synovial fluid (SF) from 24 OA and 38 RA patients was measured using an enzymelinked immunosorbent assay. The expression of FasL on SF lymphocytes (SFL) and peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) was assessed by reverse transcriptasepolymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis. A cytotoxic killing asssay of membrane-bound FasL and purified sFasL against cultured synovial cells was also performed.

Results. Soluble FasL was detected in the SF of patients with RA and OA, but not in their serum. The concentration of SF sFasL was remarkably higher in patients with severe RA than in patients with mild RA or with OA. RT-PCR showed that SFL, but not PBL, from RA patients expressed messenger RNA for FasL. Membrane-bound FasL induced apoptosis in cultured synovial cells from the RA and OA patients, but naturally processed human sFasL did not.