Editorial
Gout in the spotlight
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Correspondence: Alexander So AlexanderKai-Lik.So@chuv.ch
Service of Rheumatology, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, 1011 Lausanne, Switzerland
Arthritis Research & Therapy 2008, 10:112 doi:10.1186/ar2396
Published: 6 June 2008Abstract
Understanding how uric acid crystals provoke inflammation is crucial to improving our management of acute gout. It is well known that urate crystals stimulate monocytes and macrophages to elaborate inflammatory cytokines, but the tissue response of the synovium is less well understood. Microarray analysis of mRNA expression by these lining cells may help to delineate the genes that are modulated. Employing a murine air-pouch model, a number of genes expressed by innate immune cells were found to be rapidly upregulated by monosodium urate crystals. These findings provide new research avenues to investigate the physiopathology of gouty inflammation, and may eventually lead to new therapeutic targets in acute gout.