الفهرس 
Review of Literature: • Rheumatoid arthritisOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Background and aim of the study: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease of unknown etiology characterized by chronic progressive joint inflammation with subsequent cartilage destruction. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs) versus Methotrexate (MTX) in a rat model of RA.
Materials and Methods: Thirty six adult male albino rats were divided into two groups. group I: control group (16 rats). group II (20 rats) in which RA was induced, and then the rats were subdivided into four subgroups. Subgroup IIa and IIb were sacrificed two and four weeks after induction of RA respectively. Subgroup IIc was treated by MTX and subgroup IId was treated by BM-MSCs. Rats of Subgroup IIb and IIc were sacrificed four weeks after induction of RA. The knee joints were collected, decalcified and processed for histological, histochemical, immune-histochemical and morphometric studies.
Results: Histological examination of the knee joints revealed that RA resulted in thickening of the intimal lining of the synovial membrane, infiltration, congestion and increased collagen content of the subintima. The articular cartilage showed erosions, thinning, cell and ground substance loss and increased expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS). Injection of BM-MSCs resulted in improvement of the structure of the synovial membrane and the articular cartilage of the knee joint whereas, injection of MTX was less effective.
Conclusion: Intra- articular injection of BM-MSCs resulted in a significant improvement in the histological structure of the knee joint in comparison to MTX in a rat model of RA.
Keywords: Rheumatoid arthritis, Synovial membrane, Knee joint, MTX, Bone marrow-mesenchymal stem cells.