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The Scientific Basis of Rheumatology: A Decade of Progress

This special collection of reviews - published to mark Arthritis Research & Therapy's 10th anniversary - provides an in depth overview of the current status of basic and clinical research in rheumatology, and focuses particularly on developments in the past decade, during which there has been an explosion of new information in the field. Corporate sponsorship from Schering-Plough and Wyeth has enabled BioMed Central to make these reviews free to access online. No sponsor has had input into the content of the publication or the articles themselves. All published articles have been independently prepared by the authors, and have been subject to the journal's standard peer review process.

  4. Many of the chronic inflammatory and degenerative disorders that present to clinical rheumatologists have a complex genetic aetiology. Over the past decade a dramatic improvement in technology and methodology ...

    Authors: Alex Clarke and Timothy J Vyse
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:248
    Content type: Review Published on:

  5. B-cell development is tightly regulated, including the induction of B-cell memory and antibody-secreting plasmablasts and plasma cells. In the last decade, we have expanded our understanding of effector functi...

    Authors: Thomas Dörner, Annett M Jacobi and Peter E Lipsky
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:247
    Content type: Review Published on:

  7. Advances in genetics and new understanding of the molecular pathways that mediate innate and adaptive immune system activation, along with renewed focus on the role of the complement system as a mediator of in...

    Authors: Mary K Crow
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:245
    Content type: Review Published on:

  8. Inflammatory rheumatic diseases are generally multifaceted disorders and, therefore, measurement of multiple outcomes is relevant to most of these diseases. Developments in outcome measures in the rheumatic di...

    Authors: Jaap Fransen and Piet LCM van Riel
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:244
    Content type: Review Published on:

  9. The past 10 years have seen the description of families of receptors that drive proinflammatory cytokine production in infection and tissue injury. Two major classes have been examined in the context of inflam...

    Authors: William J McCormack, Andrew E Parker and Luke A O'Neill
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:243
    Content type: Review Published on:

  13. During the past 10 years we have experienced very significant developments in our understanding of bone biology, and this has improved our abilities to both diagnose and treat patients with osteoporosis. This ...

    Authors: Nancy E Lane and Wei Yao
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:228
    Content type: Review Published on:

  14. Osteoarthritis is often a progressive and disabling disease, which occurs in the setting of a variety of risk factors – such as advancing age, obesity, and trauma – that conspire to incite a cascade of pathoph...

    Authors: Steven B Abramson and Mukundan Attur
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:227
    Content type: Review Published on:

  15. For a long time, genetic studies of complex diseases were most successfully conducted in animal models. However, the field of genetics is now rapidly evolving, and human genetics has also started to produce st...

    Authors: Emma Ahlqvist, Malin Hultqvist and Rikard Holmdahl
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:226
    Content type: Review Published on:

  17. As the cellular component of articular cartilage, chondrocytes are responsible for maintaining in a low-turnover state the unique composition and organization of the matrix that was determined during embryonic...

    Authors: Mary B Goldring and Kenneth B Marcu
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:224
    Content type: Review Published on:

  20. Diseases such as degenerative or rheumatoid arthritis are accompanied by joint destruction. Clinically applied tissue engineering technologies like autologous chondrocyte implantation, matrix-assisted chondroc...

    Authors: Jochen Ringe and Michael Sittinger
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:211
    Content type: Review Published on:

  21. This review summarizes the recent advances of osteoimmunology, a new research field that investigates the interaction of the immune system with the skeleton. Osteoimmunology has contributed significantly to th...

    Authors: Georg Schett
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:210
    Content type: Review Published on:

  22. During the decade since the launch of Arthritis Research, the application of gene therapy to the rheumatic diseases has experienced the same vicissitudes as the field of gene therapy as a whole. There have been c...

    Authors: Christopher H Evans, Steven C Ghivizzani and Paul D Robbins
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:209
    Content type: Review Published on:

  24. Rheumatic diseases are a diverse group of disorders. Most of these diseases are heterogeneous in nature and show varying responsiveness to treatment. Because our understanding of the molecular complexity of rh...

    Authors: Lisa GM van Baarsen, Carina L Bos, Tineke CTM van der Pouw Kraan and Cornelis L Verweij
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:207
    Content type: Review Published on:

  29. Antigen receptor signaling in lymphocytes has been clearly implicated in the pathogenesis of the rheumatic diseases. Here, we review evidence from mouse models in which B-cell and T-cell signaling machinery is...

    Authors: Julie Zikherman and Arthur Weiss
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:202
    Content type: Review Published on:

  31. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), the nonhematopoietic progenitor cells found in various adult tissues, are characterized by their ease of isolation and their rapid growth in vitro while maintaining their differenti...

    Authors: Faye H Chen and Rocky S Tuan
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2008 10:223
    Content type: Review Published on:

  32. Modern imaging modalities, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), are valuable diagnostic and therapy monitoring tools in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This article reviewed how these imaging modalities have...

    Authors: Dennis McGonagle and Ai Lyn Tan
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2008 10:222
    Content type: Review Published on:

    The Erratum to this article has been published in Arthritis Research & Therapy 2009 11:401

  35. Over the last decades, genetic factors for rheumatoid diseases like the HLA haplotypes have been studied extensively. However, during the past years of research, it has become more and more evident that the in...

    Authors: Simon Strietholt, Britta Maurer, Marvin A Peters, Thomas Pap and Steffen Gay
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2008 10:219
    Content type: Review Published on:

  36. Systemic lupus erythematosus is a systemic autoimmune disease characterized by the production of antinuclear antibodies (ANAs). Recent research into human and murine lupus suggests that disease susceptibility ...

    Authors: Stacy P Ardoin and David S Pisetsky
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2008 10:218
    Content type: Review Published on:

  37. Immunoablative therapy and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is an intensive treatment modality aimed at 'resetting' the dysregulated immune system of a patient with immunoablative therapy and all...

    Authors: Thomas Hügle and Jacob M van Laar
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2008 10:217
    Content type: Review Published on:

  38. Rheumatoid arthritis is a multisystemic auto-inflammatory disease affecting up to 1% of the population and leading to the destruction of the joints. Evidence exists for the involvement of the innate as well as...

    Authors: Stefan K Drexler, Philip L Kong, Jeremy Wales and Brian M Foxwell
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2008 10:216
    Content type: Review Published on: