AUTHOR=Edwards Carl K., Green Julie S., Volk Hans-Dieter , Schiff Michael , Kotzin Brian , Mitsuya Hiroaki , Kawaguchi Tatsuya , Sakata Ken-Mei , Cheronis John , Trollinger David , Bankaitis-Davis Danute , Dinarello Charles A., Norris David A., Bevilacqua Michael P., Fujita Mayumi , Bermester Gerd-Rudiger TITLE=Combined anti-tumor necrosis factor-α therapy and DMARD therapy in rheumatoid arthritis patients reduces inflammatory gene expression in whole blood compared to DMARD therapy alone JOURNAL=Frontiers in Immunology VOLUME=3 YEAR=2012 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2012.00366 DOI=10.3389/fimmu.2012.00366 ISSN=1664-3224 ABSTRACT=
Periodic assessment of gene expression for diagnosis and monitoring in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) may provide a readily available and useful method to detect subclinical disease progression and follow responses to therapy with disease modifying anti-rheumatic agents (DMARDs) or anti-TNF-α therapy. We used quantitative real-time PCR to compare peripheral blood gene expression profiles in active (“unstable”) RA patients on DMARDs, stable RA patients on DMARDs, and stable RA patients treated with a combination of a disease-modifying anti-rheumatoid drug (DMARD) and an anti-TNF-α agent (infliximab or etanercept) to healthy human controls. The expression of 48 inflammatory genes were compared between healthy controls (