Scavenger receptor-A is a biomarker and effector of rheumatoid arthritis: A large-scale multicenter study
Fanlei Hu, Xiang Jiang, Chunqing Guo, Yingni Li, Shixian Chen, Wei Zhang, Yan Du, Ping Wang, Xi Zheng, Xiangyu Fang, Xin Li, Jing Song, Yang Xie, Fei Huang, Jimeng Xue, Mingxin Bai, Yuan Jia, Xu Liu, Limin Ren, Xiaoying Zhang, Jianping Guo, Hudan Pan, Yin Su, Huanfa Yi, Hua Ye, Daming Zuo, Juan Li, Huaxiang Wu, Yongfu Wang, Ru Li, Liang Liu, Xiang‐Yang Wang, Zhanguo Li
Abstract
Early diagnosis is critical to improve outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), but current diagnostic tools have limited sensitivity. Here we report a large-scale multicenter study involving training and validation cohorts of 3,262 participants. We show that serum levels of soluble scavenger receptor-A (sSR-A) are increased in patients with RA and correlate positively with clinical and immunological features of the disease. This discriminatory capacity of sSR-A is clinically valuable and complements the diagnosis for early stage and seronegative RA. sSR-A also has 15.97% prevalence in undifferentiated arthritis patients. Furthermore, administration of SR-A accelerates the onset of experimental arthritis in mice, whereas inhibition of SR-A ameliorates the disease pathogenesis. Together, these data identify sSR-A as a potential biomarker in diagnosis of RA, and targeting SR-A might be a therapeutic strategy.