ABSTRACT
I. INTRODUCTION Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease of unknown etiology that is associated with several immunological abnormalities ( 1-4). While a key feature of this disease is the heterogeneity of the synovial immunohistology, the tissues of many patients exhibit intense infiltration of lymphocytes (5). These lymphocytes, activated by an unknown antigenic stimulus, are felt to play a central role in the pathogeneses of RA (6,7).
