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Rheumatoid arthritis

CD142+ synovial fibroblasts attack the meniscus in knee RA

Nature Reviews Rheumatology volume 21, page 509 (2025)Cite this article

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Less than 10% of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) develop severe knee damage and undergo total knee arthroplasty (TKA). Whereas both the meniscus and cartilage are known to be damaged in knee RA, the relative contribution of meniscus damage to disease severity has been unclear.

Radiographic assessment of knee joints from patients who required TKA for knee RA or osteoarthritis indicated that the meniscus is more extensively damaged in the former, and this prompted Sun et al. to investigate the mechanisms of meniscus damage in knee RA. The authors used single-cell RNA sequencing to analyze cell populations at the cartilage, synovium and meniscus of knee biopsies from patients with severe knee RA who required TKA. These analyses identified a subpopulation of synovial fibroblasts that expressed the surface marker CD142, had an invasive and proliferative phenotype, and potentially engaged in cell–cell interactions with meniscal cells.

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  1. Nature Reviews Rheumatology http://www.nature.com/nrrheum/

    Maria Papatriantafyllou

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  1. Maria Papatriantafyllou
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Correspondence to Maria Papatriantafyllou.

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Papatriantafyllou, M. CD142+ synovial fibroblasts attack the meniscus in knee RA. Nat Rev Rheumatol 21, 509 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41584-025-01293-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41584-025-01293-y

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