Transcriptional analysis of normal and pathological synovial fibroblasts

The aim of this study was to compare gene expression between two pathological groups of human synovial fibroblasts (SF) from rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and osteoarthritis (OA) synovial tissues with normal SF from healthy individuals (HSF). We used microarray expression profiling in SF cultured from OA, RA and normal synovial tissues. We found larger numbers of transcripts with differential expression in OASF compared to the other groups than in RASF compared to HSF. This data demonstrate that cultured OASF display a more robust transcriptomic profile than RASF when compared to HSF. Synovial fibroblasts were obtained from 9 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RASF), 11 sex and age matched adult healthy donors (HSF) and 11 sex and age matched patients with OA (OASF). SF were collected under similar subconfluent conditions 24h after serum addition. 31 microarray data were used for determine the statistical significance (p value) of the differences in gene expression.