Article Text
Abstract
Objective: To examine whether human endogenous retrovirus K10 is associated with autoimmune rheumatic disease.
Design: A novel multiplex reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) system was developed to investigate HERV-K10 mRNA expression in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
Methods: 40 patients with rheumatoid arthritis, 17 with osteoarthritis, and 27 healthy individuals were recruited and total RNA was extracted from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and analysed using multiplex RT-PCR for the level of HERV-K10 gag mRNA expression. Southern blot and DNA sequencing confirmed the authenticity of the PCR products.
Results: Using the histidyl tRNA synthetase (HtRNAS) gene as a housekeeping gene in the optimised multiplex RT-PCR, a significantly higher level of HERV-K10 gag mRNA expression was found in rheumatoid arthritis than in osteoarthritis (p = 0.01) or in the healthy controls (p = 0.02).
Conclusion: There is enhanced mRNA expression of the HERV-K10 gag region in rheumatoid arthritis compared with osteoarthritis or healthy controls. This could contribute to the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis.
- HERV, human endogenous retrovirus
- HTLV, human T cell lymphotropic virus
- HtRNAS, histidyl tRNA synthetase
- NSAID, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug
- PBMC, peripheral blood mononuclear cell
- RT-PCR, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction
- human endogenous retroviruses
- rheumatoid arthritis
- peripheral blood mononuclear cells
- histidyl tRNA synthetase
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
-
Published Online First 28 September 2005