An agent in rheumatoid synovial fluid which stimulates collagen synthesis by embryonic chick tendon cells was identified as glutamine. The stimulating effect was observed only at a subnormal concentration of proline (0.02 mM). The concentration of glutamine in rheumatoid synovial fluid is about 2.5 mM but it falls rapidly during storage even at -20 degrees C. Collagen synthesis is shown to depend on the extracellular concentrations of glutamine and proline in addition to any connective tissue activating factors.
In studies with normal and rheumatoid synovial fibroblast cultures the effects of sodium aurothiomalate on the quantity and quality of hyaluronic acid were tested. This gold compound produced one clear effect: the molecular weight of hyaluronate produced by rheumatoid fibroblasts was increased (shifted towards normal) whereas the effects on the amounts of hyaluronic acid synthesized were small in both rheumatoid and control cultures. The importance of this finding in relation to the known beneficial effects of gold preparations in clinical medicine is discussed.
Dental caries prevelance in permanent teeth (DFS) was studied in 50 patients with Turner's syndrome (45,X females) and 41 normal first-degree female relatives. Caries prevalence was lower in 45,X women than in controls, and this difference was more pronounced in the incisor region than in pre-molar and molar teeth.
Prompted by Castor's investigations (4) on a connective-tissue-activating peptide (CTAP) we investigated the stimulative effect of synovial fluids and synovial-tissue extracts on the synthesis of collagen by incubated embryonic-chick tendon cells. The stimulative effect was greater with synovial-tissue extracts from more severe cases than with samples from patients having milder forms of the disease. There was no correlation between the stimulation by synovial fluids and synovial-tissue extracts from the same patient. The stimulative activity was lost at dialysis. A slight stimulation in the incorporation of glucosamine was also observed. Treatment of the patients with gold, chloroquine or steroids decreased the stimulating capacity. These effects seem to depend on factors different from those described by Castor. The differerences in the stimulant activity of samples from various groups cannot be entirely due to glutamine, which is one of the limiting nutrients of the embryonic-chick tendon cells.
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