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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, December 1998, p. 3524-3526, Vol. 36, No. 12
0095-1137/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Rubella Virus and Chronic Joint Disease: Is There an Association?

Trent J. Bosma,1,dagger John Etherington,2 Siobhan O'Shea,1 Karen Corbett,1 Fiona Cottam,1 Lennox Holt,3 J. E. Banatvala,1 and Jennifer M. Best1,*

Department of Virology, St. Thomas' Hospital Campus, King's College London,1 and Department of Rheumatology, St. Thomas' Hospital,2 London SE1 7EH, and Department of Rheumatology, Manchester Royal Infirmary, Manchester M13 9WL,3 United Kingdom

Received 1 July 1998/Returned for modification 10 August 1998/Accepted 28 September 1998

Synovial fluid samples and/or biopsies from 79 patients with various chronic inflammatory joint diseases or traumatic joint injury were tested for rubella virus (RV) in order to confirm or refute results from other studies that suggested RV as a cause of chronic inflammatory joint disease. Sixty-eight of the 72 patients tested had RV antibodies. RV RNA was detected by reverse transcription-PCR in the synovial fluid cells from two patients. RV was also isolated by cell culture from the synovial fluid of one of these two patients. This patient was a 42-year-old female with common variable immune deficiency and Mycoplasma hominis arthritis, while the other was a 68-year-old female with rheumatoid arthritis. While these results fail to confirm that RV is associated with chronic inflammatory joint disease, they suggest that RV may persist within a joint and be reactivated when cell-mediated immunity is suppressed.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Virology, St. Thomas' Hospital Campus, King's College London, London SE1 7EH, United Kingdom. Phone: 44 171 928 9292, ext. 2453/2405. Fax: 44 171 922 8387. E-mail: j.best{at}umds.ac.uk.

dagger Present address: Department of Plant Molecular Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.

Journal of Clinical Microbiology, December 1998, p. 3524-3526, Vol. 36, No. 12
0095-1137/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.




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