Detecting and exploiting the circadian clock in rheumatoid arthritis

Over the past four decades, research on 24-h rhythms has yielded numerous remarkable findings, revealing their genetic, molecular, and physiological significance for immunity and various diseases. Thus, circadian rhythms are of fundamental importance to mammals, as their disruption and misalignment have been associated with many diseases and the abnormal functioning of many physiological processes. In this article, we provide a brief overview of the molecular regulation of 24-h rhythms, their importance for immunity, the deleterious effects of misalignment, the link between such pathological rhythms and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and the potential exploitation of chronobiological rhythms for the chronotherapy of inflammatory autoimmune diseases, using RA as an example.