Rituximab Downregulates Gene Expression Associated with Cell Proliferation, Survival, and Proteolysis in the Peripheral Blood from Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients: A Link between High Baseline Autophagy-Related ULK1 Expression and Improved Pain Control

Table 2

Spearmen’s correlation coefficients and their significance () are shown for the baseline expression of the examined genes in relation to immunological markers at the end of one cycle of RTX treatment of RA patients ().

Clinical and immunological indices after one cycle of RTX therapy ()	ULK1	P21	Caspase 3	MMP-9	Cathepsin K
АСPA	0.736; p = 0.004		0.710; p = 0.006	0.600; p = 0.02
RF		0.582; p = 0.01			0.616; p = 0.01
Number of tender joints	−0.514; p = 0.04