"Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic and disabling autoimmune disease that first attacks the fluid that surrounds the joints, causing it to thicken and grow abnormally, damaging the joints and surrounding cartilage rather than protecting them. More than 2 million Americans suffer from the illness, according to the Arthritis Foundation."

"By identifying a protein that appears to be one of the culprits in the unhealthy buildup of this fluid, which is called synovial fluid, Dr. Yasushi Miura and her colleagues at Kobe University School of Medicine hope that a new, targeted medication can be developed to treat the disease."

""The protein Decoy receptor 3 (DcR3) is one of the pathological factors of RA and can be a new therapeutic target for treatment," said Miura, an associate professor in the division of orthopedic sciences at the medical school. "

"DcR3 is a member of the large tumor necrosis factor receptor (TNFR) "super family," which has been identified in the last decade as important in the regulation of cell growth and cell death, fundamental processes in biology, said Dr. Robert Hoffman, director of the division of rheumatology and immunology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Florida."

""We have known of the importance of cell growth and cell death in studying cancer but more recently have found that it is also important in autoimmune diseases like RA and lupus," he said. "

"It was the similarity between the growth of malignant tumors and the abnormal growth of synovial tissue, called hyperplasia, that sparked Miura's research into DcR3 and rheumatoid arthritis. DcR3 is known to be produced in tumor cells, including lung and colon cancers. "

"What Miura and her colleagues found was that DcR3 works with another member of the TNFR family to slow the normal cell death of synovial fluid cells, resulting in the hyperplasia that causes some of the inflammation characteristic of rheumatoid arthritis. "

"Hoffman said: "This is a novel application of the connection between this specific member of the TNFR super family and RA, and studies like this are how we advance science. But it is currently a giant leap to suggest that this could be a therapy for RA." "

"For their study, Miura and her colleagues isolated and cultured synovial fluid from19 patients with rheumatoid arthritis, obtained during total knee replacement surgery. For comparison, they also extracted synovial fluid in the same manner from 14 patients with osteoarthritis."

"The researchers then exposed
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