Rheumatoid Factor Positivity Is Associated with Increased Joint Destruction and Upregulation of Matrix Metalloproteinase 9 and Cathepsin K Gene Expression in the Peripheral Blood in Rheumatoid Arthritic Patients Treated with Methotrexate

Table 1

Correlation coefficients (Spearman’s) and their significance (𝑃) are shown for the expression of the examined genes in relation to each other and the disease markers in a sample of RA patients (𝑛=33).

	mTOR	ULK1	p21	Caspase-3	TNFα	MMP-9
mTOR		0.399; 𝑃=0.01	0.702; 𝑃<0.001	0.765; 𝑃<0.001	0.581; 𝑃<0.001
ULK1			0.531; 𝑃=0.001	0.539; 𝑃<0.001	0.383; 𝑃=0.02
p21				0.915; 𝑃<0.001	0.770; 𝑃<0.001
Caspase-3					0.632; 𝑃<0.001
MMP-9		0.661; 𝑃<0.001	0.367; 𝑃=0.03	0.389; 𝑃=0.02
Cathepsin K	0.634; 𝑃<0.001	0.628; 𝑃<0.001	0.708; 𝑃<0.001	0.708; 𝑃<0.001	0.688; 𝑃<0.001	0.499; 𝑃=0.002
Rheumatoid factor			−0.384; 𝑃=0.02	−0.430; 𝑃=0.009	−0.348; 𝑃=0.04
C-reactive protein		0.379; 𝑃=0.02				0.303; 𝑃=0.07