Rheumatoid Arthritic and Non-rheumatoid Synovium in Cell Culture

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Abstract
Cultures in-vitro of rheumatoid synovia proliferated earlier but with few exceptions could not be sub-cultured as long as non-rheumatoid synovia. Multinucleated giant cells and bizarre nuclear phenomena were more frequent in early and late rheumatoid synovial cultures. The only exceptions in the non-rheumatoid synovial cultures came from 2 patients with chronic bursitis in which the growth pattern resembled that of rheumatoid synovia to a limited extent. Early spontaneous degeneration of the cultures that might imply that they harbored a latent virus did not occur and acridine-orange preparations did not show ribonucleic-acid or deoxyribonucleic-acid inclusion bodies. Primary cultures of some rheumatoid synovia showed the presence of rheumatoid factor in plasma and round cells, and in a fibroblast-like cell in one instance only. The variations in growth pattern could be due to specific differences or the requirements of rheumatoid synovial cells in tissue culture.