title: Immunological aspects of the anemia of rheumatoid arthritis.
abstract: In order to investigate the cause of the anemia concomitant with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), we examined, using the erythroid colony assay of human bone marrow colony-forming units-erythroid (CFU-e) and burst-forming units-erythroid (BFU-e), the effects of the patients' serum and peripheral blood T lymphocytes on the CFU-e-derived colonies. The counts of erythroid colonies of RA patients were markedly lower than those of human control subjects [CFU-e: control 152.9 +/- 30.6 (n = 19), RA 51.1 +/- 13.6 (n = 7), t = 7.66567, p less than 0.01; BFU-e: control 25.2 +/- 5.9 (n = 5), RA 12.6 +/- 2.6 (n = 7), t = 4.574, p less than 0.01]. The serum from two out of seven RA patients slightly inhibited the formation of CFU-e-derived colonies of human control subjects (t = 2.31, 0.05 less than p less than 0.1); however, the serum from the other five RA patients did not significantly inhibit human control erythroid colony formation as compared with human control serum (t = 0.981, 0.3 less than p less than 0.4). On the other hand, peripheral blood T lymphocytes of the patients markedly inhibited the formation of CFU-e-derived colonies of the control subjects as compared with peripheral blood T lymphocytes from human control subjects (t = 4.24, p less than 0.01). The above-mentioned results suggest that the peripheral blood T lymphocytes of RA patients might play a role as one of the causes of the concomitant anemia of RA patients.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000740:Anemia / Q000150:complications / Q000209:etiology / Q000276:immunology*; D001172:Arthritis, Rheumatoid / Q000097:blood / Q000150:complications*; D001854:Bone Marrow Cells; D002452:Cell Count; D002455:Cell Division; D003114:Colony-Forming Units Assay; D005260:Female; D006412:Hematopoietic Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology; D006801:Humans; D008213:Lymphocyte Activation; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D013601:T-Lymphocytes / Q000166:cytology