Abstract
In a prospective 24 week study of 25 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) weekly intramuscular (IM) sodium aurothiomalate resulted in a small but significant reduction in the circulating lymphocyte count. Analysis of absolute levels of pan T cells, T4 helper cells, T8 suppressor cells, T4/8 ratio, B cells, and major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II positive cells showed reductions in these subsets, though these changes did not reach significance. At entry there was no association between circulating lymphocyte counts and subsets and clinical and laboratory indices which reflected disease activity, and during the study gold responders could not be differentiated from non-responders with regard to changes in lymphocyte counts and subsets. Thus this study suggests that weekly IM gold leads to a modest reduction in circulating lymphocyte numbers which involves most subsets. This effect appears to be independent of the clinical efficacy of this drug.
Full text
PDF
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Bertouch J. V., Roberts-Thomson P. J., Brooks P. M., Bradley J. Lymphocyte subsets and inflammatory indices in synovial fluid and blood of patients with rheumatoid arthritis. J Rheumatol. 1984 Dec;11(6):754–759. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hanly J. G., Bresnihan B. Reduction of peripheral blood lymphocytes in patients receiving gold therapy for rheumatoid arthritis. Ann Rheum Dis. 1985 May;44(5):299–301. doi: 10.1136/ard.44.5.299. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hassan J., Hanly J., Bresnihan B., Feighery C., Whelan C. A. The immunological consequences of gold therapy: a prospective study in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Clin Exp Immunol. 1986 Mar;63(3):614–620. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Zubler R. H., Nydegger U., Perrin L. H., Fehr K., McCormick J., Lambert P. H., Miescher P. A. Circulating and intra-articular immune complexes in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Correlation of 125I-Clq binding activity with clinical and biological features of the disease. J Clin Invest. 1976 May;57(5):1308–1319. doi: 10.1172/JCI108399. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]