No abstract

Objective. To examine the effect of alleles encoding the "shared"/"rheumatoid" epitope on rheumatoid arthritis (RA) disease severity in patients who participated In the minocycline in RA (MIRA) trial.Methods. Of 205 patients with a week-48 visit, blood was available for typing of HLA-DRB1 and HLA-DQB1 in 174 (85%) and successfully completed in 169 (82%). Baseline erosioes were used to assess disease severity and new erosions a t the last visit served as a proxy for progression.Results. At baseline, there was no association between the presence of erosive disease or rheumatoid factor status and the dose of rheumatoid epitope (homozygous, heterozygous, none) or the specific alleles identified. At the final visit, a gradient was observed for the 3 allelic subgroups (and their gene doses) in the occurrence of new erosions among the Caucasian placebo-

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract