Persistence and Adherence during the First Six Months of Tocilizumab Treatment Among Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients in Routine Clinical Practice in Greece. Results from the Single Arm REMISSION II Study (NCT01649817).

Objective/aim: One of the most important factors that affect a treatment's performance in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is adherence to medications. According to literature, there are several reasons for non-adherence in RA patients with some of them being related to a specific patient profile of the study population. In this study, we investigated persistence to intravenous tocilizumab (TCZ) therapy in RA during routine clinical practice in Greece and identified causes for non-adherence.

Bmp7 regulates the survival, proliferation, and neurogenic properties of neural progenitor cells during corticogenesis in the mouse.

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are considered important regulators of neural development. However, results mainly from a wide set of in vitro gain-of-function experiments are conflicting since these show that BMPs can act either as inhibitors or promoters of neurogenesis. Here, we report a specific and non-redundant role for BMP7 in cortical neurogenesis in vivo using knockout mice.

Compartmentalization of bone morphogenetic proteins and their antagonists in lymphoid progenitors and supporting microenvironments and functional implications.

Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signalling regulates lymphopoiesis in bone marrow and thymus via the interaction of haemato-lymphoid progenitors with the stroma microenvironment. Despite increasing functional evidence for the role of BMP signalling in lymphopoiesis, little is known of the spatial distribution of BMP/BMP antagonists in the thymus and of how BMP signals exert specific functions in developing lymphocytes. We analysed expression of BMP/BMP antagonists in the thymus and bone marrow and determined the topology of BMP/BMP antagonist expression using lacZ reporter mice.

Involvement of twisted gastrulation in T cell-independent plasma cell production.

Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling is increasingly implicated in immune cell differentiation and function; however, direct in vivo evidence for such a role is still missing. In this article, we report that Twisted gastrulation (TWSG1), an extracellular regulator of BMP signaling, is expressed in activated B cells and regulates T-independent B cell responses in the mouse. Twsg1-deficient B cells mount stronger T-independent type 2 responses reflected as increased IgM levels and numbers of Ag-specific IgM-secreting cells.

Generation and functional characterization of mice with a conditional BMP7 allele.

Bone Morphogenetic Proteins (BMPs) play multiple and important roles in embryonic development as well as in homeostasis and tissue repair in the adult. Bmp7 has been implicated in developmental disorders and in a variety of diseases, but functional studies to elucidate its role so far have been hampered, since mice deficient in BMP7 die around or just after birth. To facilitate such studies, we generated mice in which the Bmp7 gene has been rendered conditional-null by flanking its first coding exon with loxP sites.