Immunological aspects of the anemia of rheumatoid arthritis

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Abstract
In order to investigate the cause of the anemia concomitant with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), we examined, using the erythroid colony assay of human bone marrow colonyforming units-erythroid (CFU-e) and burst-forming units-erythroid (BFU-e), the effects of the patients' serum and peripheral blood T lymphocytes on the CFU-e-derived colonies. The counts of erythroid colonies of RA patients were markedly lower than those of human control subjects [CFU-e: control 152.9 ± 30.6 (n = 19), RA 51.1 ± 13.6 (n = 7), t = 7.66567, p < 0.01; BFU-e: control 25.2 ± 5.9 (n = 5), RA 12.6 ± 2.6 (n = 7), t = 4.574, p < 0.01]. The serum from two out of seven RA patients slightly inhibited the formation of CFU-e-derived colonies of human control subjects (t = 2.31, 0.05 < p < 0.1); however, the serum from the other five RA patients did not significantly inhibit human control erythroid colony formation as compared with human control serum (t = 0.981, 0.3 < p < 0.4). On the other hand, peripheral blood T lymphocytes of the patients markedly inhibited the formation of CFU-e-derived colonies of the control subjects (t = 4.24, p > 0.01). The above-mentioned results suggest that the peripheral blood T lymphocytes of RA patients might play a role as one of the causes of the concomitant anemia of RA patients.