Correlation between protein expression profiling of inflammation and bone metabolism in rheumatoid arthritis patients

Abstract

Objective: In patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), osteoarthrosis significantly reduces self-perception. However, the intrinsicrelationship between bone metabolism and SPP and cell activity at the molecular level remains unclear. The purpose of thisstudy was to understand the relationship between RA bone metabolic indicators and immune inflammation-related proteins. Methods: A total of 30 patients with RA and 30 healthy controls were recruited. Four bone metabolism measures and nineproteins expression measures were collected from RA patients and healthy controls. Spearman Correlation Analysis and Logistic-regression Analysis were adopted for associations between bone metabolism and proteins. Results: We screened and verified 3 key proteins, namely interleukin-11 (IL-11), interleukin-17 (IL-17) and programmed celldeath-2 (PD-L2) related to immunity and inflammation through microarray analysis. Levels of IL-2, IL-5, IL-11, IL-17, CTLA4,TNF-β were higher in RA patients than in the control group (P<0.05), meanwhile, the levels of IL-8, PD-L2, TNF-β and B7-2were low in RA patients (P>0.05).The results of Spearman Correlation Test suggested that sharp score was positively correlatedwith age, CCP was positively correlated with RF, SDS score was positively correlated with RF, IL-17 was positively correlatedwith CCP, BGP was positively correlated with BALP, RANKL was positively correlated with BALP, VAS score was negativelycorrelated with CRP, TCM score was negatively correlated with SF-36 score. Conclusion: BALP, BGP, OPG, RANKL were strongly associated with immune inflammation-related proteins and poor SPPin RA patients, which can be used to predict poor SPP in RA patients, although the underlying mechanisms need to be furtherexplored.Keywords: Rheumatoid arthritis; bone destruction; self-perception of patient; protein expression profiling.