Indentification of special gene expressions in synovial tissues of rheumatoid arthritis

Gene expression microarray was applied to discover novel rheumatoid arthritis (RA)-specific gene expressions by comparing the expression profiles of synovial membranes from patients with RA, osteoarthritis (OA) and ankylosing spondylitis (AS). We performed a gene expression microarray analysis of RA synovial membranes and simultaneously compared the expression profile with the profiles of AS and OA synovial membranes. This study was undertaken to investigate the global gene expression profiles in synovial tissues from RA (n=10), OA (n=7), and AS patients (n=5). The Illumina HumanHT-12 v4 Expression BeadChip were used for a complete genome-wide transcript profiling.