Study On Hyperplasia And Apoptosis Of Rheumatoid Arthritis Synoviocytes

Apoptosis is a physiological cell death programme, which is widely present in most living cells. Homeostasis of cells is maintained through a balance between cell proliferation and cell death. Apoptosis plays a very important role in immune system. It includes in positive and negative selection of thymocytes, and regulation of induction of cytokines. If apoptosis disorders, it can lead to the pathogenesis of diseases.Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease which is characterized by synoviocyte hyperplasia. It has been found that overproliferation of synoviocytes in situ and overproduction of cytokines are contributed to the pathogenesis of RA. Some data indicated that the hyperplasia of RA synoviocytes might be the results of disorder of apoptosis.To determine whether apoptosis occurs in the synoviol tissue and cells from patients with RA, in situ hybridization was carried out by using labeled RNA probes of fas, fasL and bcl-2 synthesized in vitro transcription.lt was showed that fas mRNAs were expressed in 6 of 7 patients with RA. Bcl-2 mRNAs were positive in 5 of 7 patients with RA. FasL mRNAs were not detectable in all of the patients. The bcl-2 mRNAs were always co-expressed with fas in RA's synovial lining cells.The positive rates of fas and bcl-2 expression in RA's synovial tissues were significantly higher than that of in patients with osteoarthritis (OA) and the normal synovial tissues...