Biomarker Signature and Musculoskeletal Ultrasound Profile in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients

The purpose of this study is to determine the kinetics of change in quantitative measures of joint inflammation by state of the art power Doppler vascular imaging and to identify biomarkers in biological samples (synovial biopsies, DNA, RNA, PBMC, serum, plasma, urine and stool samples) from parallel cohorts of RA patients undergoing different treatments. This will be achieved implementing MSUS assessments, standard laboratories techniques (such as ELISAs, gene profiling, transcriptome analysis etc.) and the novel CyTOF™ technology.