Background: In 2007 a genome wide association analyses revealed an additional risk-associated genetic region in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the tumor necrosis factor receptor-associated factor 1-complement 5 (TRAF1-C5) containing locus on chromosome 9, comprehensive evaluation of the TRAF1 in RA patients remains necessary.
Methods: Serum was obtained from 79 RA patients and from 38 healthy individuals. Concentrations of TRAF1 were measured by enzyme-linked immune sorbent assay (ELISA).
Results: We found that the serum concentration of TRAF1 in RA patients was 35.9±51.2pg/ml, the serum concentration of TRAF1 in healthy controls was 12.5±8.6pg/ml. The difference between these 2 groups was significant (p=0.003). Patients with high disease activity had significantly higher TRAF1 concentration in comparison to patients with low and moderate disease activity (p<0.05). We also found that the numerical DAS28 had a significant positive correlation with TRAF1 concentration (r=0.419, p<0.001). We found that serum GPI and RF concentrations showed a significant positive correlation with TRAF1 concentrations respectively (r=0.767, p<0.001; r=0.365, p=0.001), while CCP concentration showed no significant correlation.
Conclusions: TRAF1 plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of autoantibodies and may serve as a serologic inflammatory marker of disease activity in RA patients.
Keywords: Arthritis; Autoantibody; Disease activity; TRAF1.
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