Exogenous tumour necrosis factor α induces suppression of autoimmune arthritis.docVIP

Available online /content/10/1/R38 Research article Open Access Vol 10 No 1 Exogenous tumour necrosis factor α induces suppression of autoimmune arthritis Eugene Y Kim1, Howard H Chi1, Rajesh Rajaiah1 and Kamal D Moudgil1,2 1Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA. 2Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA. Corresponding author: Kamal D Moudgil, kmoud001@ Received: 7 Jan 2008 Revisions requested: 14 Feb 2008 Revisions received: 12 Mar 2008 Accepted: 1 Apr 2008 Published: 1 Apr 2008 Arthritis Research Therapy 2008, 10:R38 (doi:10.1186/ar2393) This article is online at: /content/10/1/R38 ? 2008 Kim et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Introduction Our previous studies showed that arthritic Lewis (LEW) rats produced the highest levels of tumour necrosis factor (TNF)α in the recovery phase of adjuvant arthritis (AA), suggesting a correlation between high TNFα levels and reduced severity of arthritis. To further explore this correlation, we compared the TNFα secretion profile of the AA-resistant Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rats with that of LEW rats, determined the effect of exogenous TNFα on the course of AA in LEW rats, and examined various mechanisms involved in TNFα-induced disease modulation. before and 6 after Mtb challenge, and then observed for signs of AA. In parallel, TNFα-treated rats were examined for changes in other cytokines, in CD4+CD25+ T cell frequency, and in indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) mRNA expression levels. Results LEW rats displayed a TNFα secretion profile that was opposite to that of the WKY rats. Furthe