Rheumatoid arthritis is a devastating disease where the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s own joint tissues. A research team at Washington State University has discovered a protein, GBP5, that plays a key role in suppressing inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis. Their research is published in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatology.
Senior author Salah-Uddin Ahmed, a professor in the College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, said, “Our initial thought had been that the GBP5 protein played a role in causing the disease, but as we worked to decipher the mechanism of GBP5 in rheumatoid arthritis we found that it was induced in response to inflammation and was trying to cut back inflammation before it goes out of control.”
This discovery sets the stage for developments in new treatments to slow or halt the progress of the disease. First author Mahamudul Haque first stumbled upon GBP5 back in 2015. Haque and Ahmed now work to compare the expression of different genes in joint tissue from rheumatoid arthritis patients and non-diseased joint tissue.
Image credit: Cori Kogan, Washington State University Health Sciences Spokane