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Animal models for rheumatoid arthritis

Published on July 30, 2015   47 min

A selection of talks on Immunology & Inflammation

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RIKARD HOLMDAHL: This material is intended to describe the use of animal models for rheumatoid arthritis. The expected audiences: scientists in both academia and industry that want to use animal modeled for rheumatoid arthritis for validating drug treatments or re-investigating basic mechanisms at the genesis of arthritis or basic mechanisms in inflammation.
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To start with, I will review rheumatoid disease itself, rheumatoid arthritis and then go through with the different available models, and then have some discussions on how to best use these models. So rheumatoid arthritis is a common disease. It actually affects 0.5% to 1% of the world population. It's spread all over the world. It comes in all ages, and it is a quite modern disease actually, a few hundred years old. And the cause is unknown. We know it's a chronic disease. It's lifelong, and it's developed as an uncontrolled inflammation. It mainly affects peripheral joints, and a typical sign is that it destroys the joint architecture, cartilage, and bone. Also, it has some systemic manifestation as well. In particular, in more severe disease cases. Importantly, this is a disease that is defined with a certain set of criteria of different symptoms and signs. And it's probably more proper to call it a syndrome with a number of different, so far undefined subtypes. This is of course important considering animal models since animal models are by definition, something we create ourselves, and it's more defined. So it might only represent subtypes of rheumatoid arthritis,