Defective serum chemotactic capacity in rheumatoid arthritis.

Polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) chemotaxis and serum chemoattractant ability were studied in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) employing the agarose plate technique. No statistically significant differences were observed in random migration of unstimulated cells compared to the controls. Moreover, there were no statistically significant differences between the chemotactic migration of control and patient cells in response to a number of non-treated sera. The chemotactic responsiveness of normal PMN cells to treated rheumatoid serum was significantly less than that observed using treated control serum with Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide. The possible explanation for this abnormality may be due to the presence of chemotactic inhibitors in some RA serum. No correlation was detected between chemoattractant activity of rheumatoid arthritis serum, circulating immune complexes or rheumatoid factor. There were no statistically significant differences in the adhesiveness of RA-PMNs compared to normal PMNs.