Discovery of the importance of an immune system protein could transform care of people with rheumatoid arthritis
An immune system protein called interleukin-27 seems to regulate the inflammatory process in lymphoid-rich rheumatoid arthritis, a finding that has the potential to prevent the onset of an aggressive and hard-to-treat form of rheumatoid arthritis.
This form of the disease accounts for up to 40% of diagnoses and about two in every five people with it do not respond to existing treatment.
Outlining their findings in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, the team from Cardiff University used mice and cells and tissue taken from people with early symptoms of the disease to explain how this variant of the disease develops.
Implications
Healthcare professionals may now be able to divide patients into different sub-groups based on the varying patterns of disease, which is influenced by how much interleukin-27 is present in each person’s joints.
Which disease sub-group a patient falls in to will influence the treatment they receive; the more tailored approach will offer a much better chance of remission. And the identification of the importance of interleukin-27 will start a new search for different drugs.
Prof Christopher Buckley, from the Rheumatology Research Group at the University of Birmingham, comments:
“The potential of interleukin-27 as a marker to stratify patients with rheumatoid arthritis into different groups is a very important discovery that will help transform our ability to use a more personalized approach in the management of patients with the most aggressive form of the disease.
“Furthermore, identifying interleukin-27 as a biomarker of the type of rheumatoid arthritis in which lymphoid tissue forms in the synovium, suggests that targeting this cytokine might be beneficial.”
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Image credit: H Powers
