Novel therapeutic strategies involving animals, arthritis, and apoptosis.

Animal models of arthritis provide a window into the pathogenesis of inflammatory joint disease. In addition, they can function as an in vivo laboratory for evaluating new and creative treatments. The potential usefulness of novel treatment strategies, including recombinant cytokine therapy, gene delivery, and regulation of apoptosis, have been explored and offer clues to the feasibility of human therapeutic trials. New models of arthritis have also been developed in an effort to increase the predictive capacity for efficacy in rheumatoid arthritis.