Structure of T cell antigen receptor beta chain in synovial fluid cells from patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

We attempted to identify a clonal proliferation of T cells from synovial fluid samples from patients with rheumatoid arthritis, using techniques of restriction fragment length polymorphism. We used probes for the beta chain of the T cell receptor to analyze restriction fragments prepared from the genomic DNA of synovial fluid mononuclear cells from 10 patients and synovial fluid T cell preparations from 5 additional patients. The results demonstrated unarranged (germline) T cell receptor gene fragments of DNA in all cell preparations, indicating the lack of clonality of rheumatoid arthritis synovial fluid T cells.