Figure 1

Effects of immunoablative therapy. Shown are the effects of immunoablative therapy on rheumatoid arthritis (RA)-specific autoantibody responses, physiological antibody responses and total immunoglobulin levels. The individual disease course of patients was split in four consecutive time periods: before immunoablative therapy ('pre-TX'), the lowest antibody level after immunoablative therapy ('nadir'), the period after immunoablative therapy without disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) therapy ('DMARD free'), and the time of overt clinical flare of synovitis ('relapse'). Because the duration of the DMARD-free period varied for each patient (see Table 1), the presented levels are a mean of all observations during that period. Each symbol corresponds to a different patient. (a) Titers of antibodies against anti-cyclic citrullinated protein (ACPA)-IgG. The cut-off for ACPA-IgG is 25 arbitrary units (AU)/ml. In patient 1 a long-lasting undetectable level of ACPA-IgG was observed after high-dose chemotherapy plus haematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Levels below the detection limit were arbitrarily assigned a value of 4 AU/mL to optimize the graphical representation. (b) Titres of rubella of the IgG isotype (RL-IgG). (c) Titres of total circulating IgG. (d) Titres of rheumatoid factor (RF)-IgM.(e) Titres of anti-phosphorylcholine of the IgM isotype (PC-IgM). (f) Titres of total circulating IgM.