COMPARISON OF C-REACTIVE PROTEIN (CRP) LEVEL AND RHEUMATOID FACTOR ISOTYPES IN PATIENTS WITH RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a systemic autoimmune disease. Production of Rheumatoid Factor(RF) is a characteristic feature of the majority RA patients. Previous studies showed there are differences between seropositive-RA(SP-RA) and seronegative-RA(SN-RA), regarding clinical manifestations. In this study the level of CRP was measured in serum and synovial fluid of 45 RA patients by latex agglutination test. The concentration of IgM RF and IgA RF was also quantitated by ELISA. The patients were divided in two groups (SP-RA, n=35 and SN-RA, n=10) based on the Latex agglutination test. The results show that the level of CRP in SP-RA was significantly higher than that of SN-RA (p<0.0001). This correlation was more evident for the IgA RF (r=0.59, p<0.0001) as compared to the levels IgM RF (r=0.47, p<0.004). These results indicated that there is correlation between CRP and RF levels. However IgA RF may be considered as a marker for disease severity.