Table 1.
Demographic data and disease indicators of 101 patients with RA.
Figure 1.
Analysis of the recombinant catalytic domain of BRAF by SDS-PAGE.
Samples were separated by electrophoresis on polyacrylamide gels and stained with Coomassie blue. M: molecular mass marker proteins. Lane 1: BL21-(DE3) cells carrying pET28b-BRAF plasmid induced by 0.1 mM IPTG for 4 h at 37°C. Lane 2: inclusion bodies after extraction. Lane 3: 6× His-tagged proteins eluted with imidazole. The weight of the molecular mass markers is indicated on the left side of the figure.
Figure 2.
Distribution of BRAF-specific antibodies in diseases and controls.
BRAF-specific antibodies were detected in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA, n = 101), primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS, n = 132), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE, n = 118), and healthy controls (HC, n = 140 for anti-BRAF and n = 89 for anti-P25) using indirect ELISAs based on the recombinant catalytic domain of BRAF (A) or a synthesized peptide (B). Antibody titers were expressed as arbitrary units (AU). The cutoff value for positivity was set as 2 SD above the mean AU of the healthy controls (dashed line).
Table 2.
Prevalence of BRAF specific antibodies in the test samples.
Figure 3.
Correlation of anti-P25 antibodies with ESRs in RA patients.
The correlation of anti-P25 antibodies and ESRs in 81 RA patients was assessed by Spearman rank correlation coefficients. The coefficient (r = 0.319, p = 0.004) suggests a weak but significant association between anti-P25 antibodies and ESR values.
Table 3.
Comparisons of disease indicators between patients with and without BRAF-specific antibodies.