Patients with early rheumatoid arthritis exhibit elevated autoantibody titers against mildly oxidized low-density lipoprotein and exhibit decreased activity of the lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A(2)

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disease, associated with an excess of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality due to accelerated atherosclerosis. Oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL), the antibodies against oxLDL and the lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A(2 )(Lp-PLA(2)) may play important roles in inflammation and atherosclerosis. We investigated the plasma levels of oxLDL and Lp-PLA(2 )activity as well as the autoantibody titers against mildly oxLDL in patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (ERA). The long-term effects of immunointervention on these parameters in patients with active disease were also determined. Fifty-eight ERA patients who met the American College of Rheumatology criteria were included in the study. Patients were treated with methotrexate and prednisone. Sixty-three apparently healthy volunteers also participated in the study and served as controls. Three different types of mildly oxLDL were prepared at the end of the lag, propagation and decomposition phases of oxidation. The serum autoantibody titers of the IgG type against all types of oxLDL were determined by an ELISA method. The plasma levels of oxLDL and the Lp-PLA(2 )activity were determined by an ELISA method and by the trichloroacetic acid precipitation procedure, respectively. At baseline, ERA patients exhibited elevated autoantibody titers against all types of mildly oxLDL as well as low activity of the total plasma Lp-PLA(2 )and the Lp-PLA(2 )associated with the high-density lipoprotein, compared with controls. Multivariate regression analysis showed that the elevated autoantibody titers towards oxLDL at the end of the decomposition phase of oxidation and the low plasma Lp-PLA(2 )activity are independently associated with ERA. After immunointervention autoantibody titers against all types of oxLDL were decreased in parallel to the increase in high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol and high-density lipoprotein-Lp-PLA(2 )activity. We conclude that elevated autoantibody titers against oxLDL at the end of the decomposition phase of oxidation and low plasma Lp-PLA(2 )activity are feature characteristics of patients with ERA, suggesting an important role of these parameters in the pathophysiology of ERA as well as in the accelerated atherosclerosis observed in these patients

On Using Reliable Network RAM in Networks of Workstations

File systems and databases usually make several synchronous disk write accesses in order to make sure that the disk always has a consistent view of their data, and that data can be recovered in the case of a system crash. Since synchronous disk operations are slow, some systems choose to employ asynchronous disk write operations, at the cost of low reliability: in case of a system crash all data that have not yet been written to disk are lost

Correlation between serum levels of high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol and autoantibody titers against oxidized low-density lipoprotein

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Patients with early rheumatoid arthritis exhibit elevated autoantibody titers against mildly oxidized low-density lipoprotein and exhibit decreased activity of the lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A"</p><p>http://arthritis-research.com/content/9/1/R19</p><p>Arthritis Research & Therapy 2007;9(1):R19-R19.</p><p>Published online 27 Feb 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC1860077.</p><p></p> Correlation between serum levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-cholesterol and autoantibody titers against oxidized low-density lipoprotein in the propagation phase (oxLDL) and oxidized low-density lipoprotein in the decomposition phase (oxLDL) in early rheumatoid arthritis patients at baseline. Correlation between HDL-associated lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A(HDL-Lp-PLA) activity and autoantibody titers against oxLDLin early rheumatoid arthritis patients at baseline