Fig. 1.

RasGRP1 and RasGRP3 gene expression fluctuations in periperhal blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) treated with biologic agents at baseline and after treatment or after in vitro TNFα stimulation. a PBMCs were isolated from whole blood from RA patients treated with adalimumab (n = 21; 4 male and 17 female; 52 ± 3 years old) and etanercept (n = 9; 4 male and 5 female; 54 ± 5 years old) before treatment (V0) and 3 months later (V2) or abatacept (n = 30; 3 male and 27 female; 61 ± 1 years old) before treatment (V0) and 6 months later (V2). b PBMCs were isolated from whole blood of RA patients untreated with biologics (n = 6; 1 male and 5 female; 54 ± 10 years old) and cultured with or without TNFα for 24, 48 or 72 hours. Quantitative PCR analysis was performed to measure RasGRP1 and RasGRP3 gene expression levels. The relative expression levels (in arbitrary units (AU)) of RasGRP1 and RasGRP3 were normalized with 18S RNA abundance. Mean ± standard error of the mean were compared using Student’s t test or the Wilcoxon paired test: *p <0.05; **p <0.01; ***p <0.001