Circulating cytokine profiles and their relationships with autoantibodies, acute phase reactants, and disease activity in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Abstract

Our objective was to analyse the relationship between circulating cytokines, autoantibodies, acute phase reactants, and disease activity in DMARDs-nave rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients (n=140). All cytokines were significantly higher in the RA cohort than in healthy controls. Moderate-to-strong positive intercorrelations were observed between Th1/Th2/macrophage/fibroblast-derived cytokines. RF correlated significantly with IL-1, IL-2, IL-4, IL-10, IL-12, G-CSF, GM-CSF, IFN-, and TNF (P