الفهرس 
Material and methodsOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic disease characterized by chronic inflammation of synovial joints. Chronic synovitis often leads to destruction of joint cartilage and bone and is systemically accompanied by a marked acute phase response.
The present study involved 40 pathological cases (5 males and 35 females) of age ranged from 27 to 66 years. They were suffering from classical or definite RA as defined by the diagnostic criteria of American Rheumatism Association (Ropes et al., 1959) . Another group comprising appearently healthy individuals of matched age (ranged from 28 to 65 years ) and sex (3 males and 17 females ) and living under the same environmental and relevent socioeconomic conditions were selected to serve as reference group.
All patients and reference group were subjected to the following:
1-Full medical history.
2-Full clinical examination.
3-Laboratory investigations included:-
*Haematological investigations : CBC, platelet count and ESR.
*Biochemical investigations : Alkaline phosphatase ,
aminotransferases, creatinine and B2 - microglobtilin.
*Serological investigations: IL-6 , CRP, RF and ANA . The findings showed that:-
- There was a significant increase in serum IL-6 level in patients with rheumatoid arthritis as compared to controls
- There was a significant corrlation between serum IL-6 and acute phase reactants as estimated by ESR and CRP.
- There was a significant correlation between serum IL-6 and rheumatoid activity and platelet counts.
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-No significant difference in S. IL-6 level was observed when patients with RA were divided according to line of treatment.
-There was a significant increase in S.B2 - M in RA patients as compared to controls and it was well correlated with rheumatoid activity and acute phase reactants as measured by CRP and ESR. - There was a positive signifcant correlation between serum IL-6 and
serum B2 - M.
from these findings we concluded that:-
* Patients with RA were found to have significant elevation of serum B2-M levels and this was correlated with ESR and CRP levels. According to this, serum B2-M could become part of the routine biochemical assessments of RA with more revelance to the disease process than acute phase proteins.
* Serum IL-6 levels were markedly elevated in patients with RA and their levels were correlated well with rheumatoid activity, ESR, CRP levels and thrombocytosis. So, IL-6 may play an important role in the pathogenesis of inflammation in RA and it is a good indicator of the degree of
inflammation.
* Serial estimation of serum IL-6 may be useful in disease assessment, since in addition to acute phase responses, it also reflects other indices of immunological inflammatory activity such as RFs titers and
thrombocytosis.
* The future availability of inhibitors of 1L-6 production or antagonists of its action, could lead to development of an effective theraputic agent for
this disease.