SAT0062 Association of Obesity with Rheumatoid Arthritis: the Visceral/Subcutaneous FAT Ratio Affects Disease Activity, Resistance to Methotrexate Treatment and the Expression of FAS Gene in Peripheral Blood

Background Adipose tissue is well known to induce adipocytokines and inflammatory cytokines. Recently, it has been reported that obesity may associate with disease severity and with resistance to treatments in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). On the other hand, the differences in the biological characters of visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) have been discussed. So far, the involvement of these adipose tissues on the pathogenic importance in RA has not been elucidated. Objectives To investigate the impact of obesity or distribution of body fat on disease activity, therapeutic response and gene expression profiles of peripheral blood in RA patients. Methods A cross sectional image at navel level by Computed tomography (CT) was used for measuring the area of VAT and SAT in 125 women with RA. Next, we analyzed the correlations between disease activity score (DAS) and body mass index (BMI), VAT, SAT, or VAT/SAT ratio (V/S ratio). The DAS was randomly sampled if the treatment of patients was sustained for at least three months. As 11 of the patients were started MTX treatment after newly diagnosed as RA, the differences in the backgrounds of patients including BMI, VAT, SAT or V/S ratio were investigated between good/moderate and no response group determined by EULAR response criteria. Moreover, in the 7 of these untreated patients, gene expression profiles of peripheral blood were analyzed with using Agilent whole human genome 60K (single-color procedure). Results The significant correlation of DAS was found only with V/S ratio (p