Intestinal Microbiota Reduction Followed by Fasting Discloses Microbial Triggering of Inflammation in Rheumatoid Arthritis.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) synovitis is dominated by monocytes/macrophages with inflammatory patterns resembling microbial stimulation. In search of triggers, we reduced the intestinal microbiome in 20 RA patients (open label study DRKS00014097) by bowel cleansing and 7-day fasting (≤250 kcal/day) and performed immune monitoring and microbiome sequencing. Patients with metabolic syndrome ( = 10) served as a non-inflammatory control group.

Improving target assessment in biomedical research: the GOT-IT recommendations.

Academic research plays a key role in identifying new drug targets, including understanding target biology and links between targets and disease states. To lead to new drugs, however, research must progress from purely academic exploration to the initiation of efforts to identify and test a drug candidate in clinical trials, which are typically conducted by the biopharma industry. This transition can be facilitated by a timely focus on target assessment aspects such as target-related safety issues, druggability and assayability, as well as the potential for target modulation to achieve differentiation from established therapies.

Synovial tissue transcriptomes of long-standing rheumatoid arthritis are dominated by activated macrophages that reflect microbial stimulation.

Advances in microbiome research suggest involvement in chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Searching for initial trigger(s) in RA, we compared transcriptome profiles of highly inflamed RA synovial tissue (RA-ST) and osteoarthritis (OA)-ST with 182 selected reference transcriptomes of defined cell types and their activation by exogenous (microbial) and endogenous inflammatory stimuli. Screening for dominant changes in RA-ST demonstrated activation of monocytes/macrophages with gene-patterns induced by bacterial and fungal triggers.

Genomic stratification by expression of HLA-DRB4 alleles identifies differential innate and adaptive immune transcriptional patterns - A strategy to detect predictors of methotrexate response in early rheumatoid arthritis.

Effective drug selection is the current challenge in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Treatment failure may follow different pathomechanisms and therefore require investigation of molecularly defined subgroups. In this exploratory study, whole blood transcriptomes of 68 treatment-naïve early RA patients were analyzed before initiating MTX.

High magnetic shear gain in a liquid sodium stable Couette flow experiment: a prelude to an α-Ω dynamo.

The Ω phase of the liquid sodium α-Ω dynamo experiment at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in cooperation with Los Alamos National Laboratory has demonstrated a high toroidal field B(ϕ) that is ≃8×B(r), where B(r) is the radial component of an applied poloidal magnetic field. This enhanced toroidal field is produced by the rotational shear in stable Couette flow within liquid sodium at a magnetic Reynolds number Rm≃120. Small turbulence in stable Taylor-Couette flow is caused by Ekman flow at the end walls, which causes an estimated turbulence energy fraction of (δv/v)(2)∼10(-3).