National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS)
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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a common autoimmune disorder that affects around 1% of the world’s population. The associating morbidity extends out of the joints to involve many vital organs in addition to increased mortality rates. Environmental infections are one of the accused elements to be a risk factor for RA. The relationship between RA and toxoplasmosis was a point of controversy where most of the human studies reported either absent or positive correlation. They usually linked toxoplasmosis to suppressed immunity by the drugs used for RA treatment which enhances activation of latent infections. The current work studied the actual effect of toxoplasmosis on RA by excluding the immune-suppressive action of drugs. The studied population was all newly diagnosed cases who did not start RA treatment. We also studied the effect of programmed death-1, PD-1 (which is overexpressed in chronic toxoplasmosis) on RA severity. We recorded a higher age of onset and decreased severity markers of RA in toxoplasmosis positive patients. The higher lymphocytic PD-1 expression that associated toxoplasmosis was negatively correlated to RA severity. We concluded that toxoplasmosis delayed onset of RA and decreased its severity. These effects can be related to the toxoplasmosis associated increase in lymphocytic PD-1 expression.
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