Arthritis_RA_OA_VNS

Pigmented villonodular synovitis (PVNS) represents a rare group of lesions with morphological features suggesting an inflammatory as well as a neoplastic nature. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is characterized by a chronic inflammation of the synovial tissue and a tumor-like proliferation (TLP) of synovial stroma cells. Osteoarthritis (OA) shows modest inflammatory infiltrates and no TLP. All three diseases result in a progressive destruction of affected joints and remain a diagnostic difficulty because of nonspecific symptoms. This study aimed to identify molecular markers and genes correlated with the development of RA, OA, and PVNS using human whole genome cDNA microarrays and tissue samples obtained from knee surgery. Keywords: disease state analysis This series includes dual channel hybridizations of 48 independent synovial membrane samples on Unigene3.1 cDNA Arrays. The 48 biopsies were collected from 18 patients with RA, 19 patients with OA and 11 patients with PVNS. For every independent sample, minimum of two technical replicates were performed and further processed as mean values.