The Polymorphism Of T Cell Receptor In Rheumatoid Arthritis

Aims: By detecting the TCR Vβ usage, expression level and identifing the T cell clonalities of the synovial membrane and peripheral blood in rheumatoid arthritis patients so to explore the role of T cells in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis in this country and produce some database for possible new treatmeat.Methods: TCR Vβ gene expression and T cell clonity were analyzed from synovial membrane and peripheral blood of 8 rheumatoid arthritis (RA), 2 osteoarthritis and 2 amputed accident patients. The complementary determining region 3 (CDR3) of 25 TCR Vβ subfamily genes in unselected T cell populations were amplified semi-quantitatively by RT-PCR, the products were further studied by genescan for frequency of Vβ usage and identification of T cell clonity. Some oligoclonal or monoclonal T cells were selected and their TCR Vβ genes were sequence-analyzied after clonalization.Results: The expression of almost all subfamilies of the TCR Vβ genes was found in RA patients as well as the amputed and osteoarthritis patients. Although heterogeneous patterns of skewed Vβ utilization were observed, some trends emerged. The usages of Vβ₆ ,Vβ₁₇,Vβ₂₂ genes in the synovium were respectively more than 10% and more than twofold compared to that in peripheral blood, which was regarded as predominant subfamilies. It was noteworthy that the expression of Vβ₁₇ in RA synovium was significantly increased. Most of the Vβ subfamily T cells (including predominant subfamily T cell) were found to be polyclonal.Conclusions: Our results indicated that the number of Vβ subfamilies expressed by RA peripheral blood and synovial T cells were not significantly restricted. More importantly, some evidences indicate biased Vβ gene utilization in synovia of rheumatoid patients could be observed in...