The liver X receptor pathway is highly upregulated in rheumatoid arthritis synovial macrophages and potentiates TLR-driven cytokine release.

Objectives: Macrophages are central to the inflammatory processes driving rheumatoid arthritis (RA) synovitis. The molecular pathways that are induced in synovial macrophages and thereby promote RA disease pathology remain poorly understood.

Methods: We used microarray to characterise the transcriptome of synovial fluid (SF) macrophages compared with matched peripheral blood monocytes from patients with RA (n=8).