Review Paper
B cell depletion with monoclonal antibody as treatment for rheumatoid arthritis
More details
Hide details
Online publication date: 2006-06-26
Reumatologia 2006;44(3):162-168
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
In recent years our knowledge of the role of B lymphocytes in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has expanded and it is now thought that B cells have a more extensive role than was previously appreciated. They seem to play a pivotal role in the activation of synovial T cells and induction of cytokine secretion. CD20 antigen expressed on the surface of B cells is highly specific to B cells. The success of B cell depletion therapy by using the monoclonal antibody Rituximab, which targets CD20, further emphasized the importance of B cells in the pathogenesis of RA.
Copyright: © Narodowy Instytut Geriatrii, Reumatologii i Rehabilitacji w Warszawie. This is an Open Access journal, all articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License (
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.