Fig. 1.

Metallothionein decreased the clinical manifestations of established CIA. DBA/1 J mice were immunized with CII plus CFA at day 0 and followed by booster immunization with CII plus IFA at day 14. From day 21–32, mice were injected intraperitoneally with 100 μg/day of metallothionein-I + II (○) or saline (•) everyday except days 24 and 28. These figures resulted from three independent sets of experiments and represent means ± SEMs (n = 15 per group). From day 23–32, arthritic indexes from metallothionein-injected mice were significantly different from those from vehicle-treated mice at each day (P <0·01, t-test).