To identify associations between immunostimulated cytokine production and disease characteristics, peripheral blood lymphocytes were collected from 155 adult patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) before and after a 5-year interval. The lymphocytes were activated in vitro with T-cell stimulants, cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) oligonucleotide, and medium alone (negative control). Expression of 17 cytokines was evaluated with immunoassays, and factor analysis was used to reduce data complexity and identify cytokine combinations indicative of cell types preferentially activated by each immunostimulant. The findings showed that the highest numbers of correlations were between cytokine levels and rheumatoid factor (RF) positivity and between cytokine levels and disease duration. Scores for cytokines driven by CpG and medium alone were negatively associated with RF positivity and disease duration at baseline but positively associated with both at 5 years. Our findings suggest that RF expression sustained over time increases activation of B cells and monocytes without requirements for T-cell functions.

中文翻译：

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类风湿关节炎患者免疫刺激的外周血淋巴细胞表达类风湿因子和细胞因子之间的纵向关系：B 细胞激活的新见解。


为了确定免疫刺​​激细胞因子产生与疾病特征之间的关联，我们在 5 年的时间间隔前后收集了 155 名类风湿性关节炎 (RA) 成年患者的外周血淋巴细胞。在体外用 T 细胞刺激剂、胞嘧啶-磷酸-鸟嘌呤 (CpG) 寡核苷酸和单独的培养基（阴性对照）激活淋巴细胞。通过免疫测定评估 17 种细胞因子的表达，并使用因子分析来降低数据复杂性并识别表明每种免疫刺激剂优先激活的细胞类型的细胞因子组合。研究结果表明，细胞因子水平与类风湿因子（RF）阳性之间以及细胞因子水平与疾病持续时间之间的相关性最高。由 CpG 和单独的培养基驱动的细胞因子得分在基线时与 RF 阳性和疾病持续时间呈负相关，但在 5 年时与两者呈正相关。我们的研究结果表明，随着时间的推移持续的 RF 表达会增加 B 细胞和单核细胞的激活，而不需要 T 细胞功能。