Affymetrix Chip Data of the Transcriptome of the Rheumatoid Arthritis Rat Model Treated with Acupuncture (Affymetrix, mRNA, batch 2)

We report the application of Affymetrix technology for high-throughput profiling of the transcriptome of the rheumatoid arthritis (RA) rat model induced by collagen type II (CIA), with acupuncture and Methotrexate+acupuncture treatment, as well as epidermal needle manipulation on healthy rat model. The experiment was designed as 3 arms: epidermal needle manipulation on healthy rat model (HAP) and RA (rheumatoid arthritis) rat model (AP), and Methotrexate injection accompanied with epidermal needle manipulation (MTXAP). Whole blood sampling was carried out before any therapy in RA (RA_T0) and healthy rats (NORA_T0) rats, and after 34 days of therapeutic treatments for any group (AP, HAP and MTXAP). From all the 14 blood collected samples (three replicates for each group, for each timepoint), PBMC (Peripheral Blood mononuclear Cells) were isolated and total RNA extracted. Finally, purified RNA were analyzed using Affymetrix microarray technology (rat230 2.0, ~31,000 probe sets, ~ 30,000 transcripts and variants from over 28,000 well-substantiated rat genes).