Syracuse

Joint pain is one of the most debilitating symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and up to 70% of patients rate pain improvement as their priority. A major subset of RA patients is seropositive for anti-citrullinated protein antibodies (ACPA, which together with other autoantibodies, are often detected in serum or synovial fluid before joint inflammation and RA diagnosis. Seropositivity is often associated with pre-arthritis symptoms which include arthralgia (joint pain) and bone loss. We previously found that transferring ACPA IgG purified from RA patients to mice induces pain-like behavior and bone erosion, independent of joint inflammation 1 .