Characterization of T‐Cell Receptor αβ Repertoire in Synovial Tissue from Different Temporal Phases of Rheumatoid Arthritis

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Abstract
With the aim of investigating the distribution of T cells expressing different T‐cell receptors (TCR) in the inflamed synovial tissue of rheumatoid arthritis patients, we have used the polymerase chain reaction to amplify TCR Vα and Vβ transcripts from synovial biopsies obtained by arthroscopy from patients with arthritis of variable duration. From each of nine patients a single biopsy was taken. Southern hybridization analysis of amplified products revealed extensive heterogeneity of TCR Vβ in most patients. On the other hand, restriction in Vα gene expression was seen in several patients. A highly restricted Vα repertoire was observed in all cases with arthritis of short duration. In addition, two of three samples of short duration yielded a more limited number of Vβ transcripts than the others. No conformity was, however, seen in usage of individual Vα and Vβ transcripts among the investigated patients. The present data thus demonstrate variability in synovial TCR expression between rheumatoid arthritis patients, but they also indicate a development towards greater diversity with increasing disease duration, implicating the necessity for careful choice of cases, preferentially selecting for early stages of disease, when further analysing rheumatoid synovial T cells for TCR usage as well as for antigen specificity.