ROCHESTER, N.Y., Dec. 28 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers genetically modified mice with a well-established rheumatoid arthritis susceptibility to determine why women suffer more from arthritis.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic have produced a new breed of transgenic mice with autoimmune responses similar to human rheumatoid arthritis patients and increased incidence of the disease in females.
This humanized mouse model may be valuable for not only studying sex differences in rheumatoid arthritis, but also for understanding why women are particularly vulnerable to autoimmunity and for developing future therapeutic strategies.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a complex and confounding autoimmune disease associated with a variety of genetic and environmental factors and known to strike women about three times as frequently as men. A major obstacle to investigating this clear sex bias has been the lack of a laboratory rat or mouse that mimics human rheumatoid arthritis.
The findings are published in the January issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism.
