You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 73, Issue 6
  • Antibodies against Porphyromonas gingivalis in seropositive arthralgia patients do not predict development of rheumatoid arthritis

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Letter
Antibodies against Porphyromonas gingivalis in seropositive arthralgia patients do not predict development of rheumatoid arthritis
  1. Menke de Smit1,
  2. Lotte Arwen van de Stadt2,3,
  3. Koen M J Janssen4,
  4. Berber Doornbos-van der Meer5,
  5. Arjan Vissink4,
  6. Arie Jan van Winkelhoff6,
  7. Elisabeth Brouwer5,
  8. Johanna Westra5,
  9. Dirkjan van Schaardenburg3,7
  1. 1 Center for Dentistry and Oral Hygiene, University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
  2. 2 Sanquin Research and Landsteiner Laboratory, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  3. 3 Jan van Breemen Research Institute | Reade, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  4. 4 Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
  5. 5 Department of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
  6. 6 Department of Medical Microbiology, Center for Dentistry and Oral Hygiene, University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
  7. 7 Department of Rheumatology, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  1. Correspondence to Menke de Smit, Center for Dentistry and Oral Hygiene, University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, PO Box 196, Groningen 9700 AD, The Netherlands; m.j.de.smit{at}umcg.nl

https://doi.org/10.1136/annrheumdis-2013-204594

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Clinical studies point towards an association between periodontitis and rheumatoid arthritis (RA).1 ,2 A pathogenic role is suggested for Porphyromonas gingivalis.3 P gingivalis may contribute to the pathogenesis of RA by breaking immune tolerance through formation of (bacterial and human) citrullinated proteins, leading to anticitrullinated protein antibody production (ACPA).4 ,5 Since ACPA production precedes RA development6 and because P gingivalis IgG antibodies are long-term stable in untreated periodontitis patients,7 we investigated whether anti-P gingivalis antibody levels are prognostic for development of RA, by assessing these antibodies in a cohort of 289 adults at risk for RA. Patients with arthralgia and seropositivity for IgM-rheumatoid factor (IgM-RF) and/or ACPA were selected from a prospective follow-up study on arthritis development.8 They are further referred to as seropositive arthralgia patients (SAP); their median follow-up was 30 months (IQR 13–49).

    Baseline sera were used for measurement of ACPA, IgM-RF, C-reactive protein (CRP) and HLA-DRB1 SE carrier status.8 IgA, IgG and IgM antibody levels against P gingivalis were determined by in-house ELISA with a pooled lysate of clinical isolates of P gingivalis as …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors Study conception and design: JW, EB, LAvdS and DvS. Acquisition of data: LAvdS, DvS, MdS, BD-vdM and KMJJ. Analysis and interpretation of data: MdS, KMJJ, EB, AJvW, AV, JW and DvS. Drafting of manuscript: MdS. Critical revision: AJvW, AV, EB, JW and DvS.

    • Funding This study was funded by the authors' institutions. The SAP cohort was supported by grants from the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) (grant number 6100.0010) and the Dutch Arthritis Association (grant number 0801034).

    • Competing interests None.

    • Ethics approval Ethics Committee of the Slotervaart Hospital and the Jan van Breemen Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.