Network regulation in rheumatoid arthritis. studies of dr+ t cells, anti‐dr, antiidiotypic antibodies, and clinical disease activity

Abstract

We prospectively studied rheumatoid arthritis patients with various degrees of clinical disease activity, for the presence of DR+ T cells by flow cytometry, for anti‐DR using immunoblot analysis, and for antiidiotypic (anti‐id) antibodies by enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay using F(ab′)2 monoclonal antibody anti‐DR L243 as idiotype. DR+ T cells correlated positively with anti‐DR, and anti‐id correlated negatively with both DR+ T cells and anti‐DR. Active clinical disease correlated positively with both DR+ T cells and anti‐DR, and correlated negatively with anti‐id. This DR antigen/anti‐DR/anti‐id network may control disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis patients.

A synthetic peptide from the third hypervariable region of major histocompatibility complex class II beta chain as a vaccine for treatment of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

“…However, circulating anti-HLA-DR antibodies (IgM isotype) were seen after immunization with tetanus in normal volunteers (25). Anti-HLA-DR antibodies have also been described in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and Hodgkin disease (26)(27)(28). The immunoglobulin fraction of sera derived from patients with SLE decreased antigen presentation by macrophages and was correlated with the presence of anti-lymphocyte antibodies (29).…”