Examination of Biopsies From Healthy Knee Joints for the Use of Research Activities in Inflammatory Joint Diseases

Arthritis is caused by autoimmune disease in the cells and pathogenesis of the tissue. This autoimmune inflammation is very often a chronic disease which causes irreversible articular damage. Rheumatoid arthritis is very often a painful and disabling disease if the treatment turns out to be ineffectual. Several of the available remedies can not treat the disease totally but only keep the patients in check.

The biological mechanisms which cause an autoimmune inflammatory articular disease have not been proved scientifically yet. Under normal conditions, the immune system adapts easily in order to protect the body against pathogenic bacteria and virus without causing damage on the body's own cells. Autoimmune inflammatory diseases displace this balance in a way so that the immune system can not distinguish between "self" and "non-self". Different kinds of cells are involved in this chronic inflammation in the joints. Majority of these cells belong to the heart of the immune response, for example T-lymphocytes, B-lymphocytes, macrophages, dendrites and granulocytes. However, other cells are also involved, for example synovial fibroblasts and endothelium.

It is very important to understand the interaction of these cells in order to develop new medicinal products for inflammatory articular diseases. The big challenge for conduction research in inflammatory articular diseases is to achieve more evidence-based knowledge of the synovial tissue from the patients and the control group.