Effect of age on the arthritis susceptibility of BALB/c mice

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) usually begins in females in their 4th-5th decade, suggesting that the aging of the immune system (immunosenescence) has a major impact on this disease. In the present microarray study, we set out to identify age- and arthritis-related gene expression pattern changes in proteoglycan (aggrecan)-induced arthritis (PGIA) model. Keywords: disease state analysis We compared the gene expression profile of spleens from PG-immunized but non-arthritic old (older than 4 months) and young (1 month old) mice, and then made a comparison between non-arthritic and age-matched arthritic mice.