Amina Nimaa Al-Thwani

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disorder of unknown etiology, despite therapy may result in progressive joint destruction, deformity that lead to disability, and even premature death in some cases. Random Amplified DNA Polymorphism (RAPD) technology showed high efficiency in investigating the genetic diversity between healthy control group and RA patients and detecting the genetic diversity among RA patients and the effect of this diversity on the patients response to the drugs regimens used to treat RA. The primers GATGACCGC and ACAACGCCTC showed the best ability to discrimate between the healthy subjects and the RA patients, and the primers GATGACCGC, ACAACGCCTC and CAGCACCCAC showed the best ability to detect the genetic diversity among RA patients and detecting the effect of this diversity on the patients' response to treatments. Analysis of the resulted pattern of amplifications through the Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic mean (UPGMA) algorithm program revealed an important thing which is the fact that RAPD technology is an important relatively cheap and available technology that can be used in pharmacogenomics because of the fact that there is an association between the genetic content of the patients and their response to different treatment regimen. Key words: RAPD/ PCR technology, rheumatoid arthritis genetics, population genetics, Iraqi population genetics