Entropy and synovial pathology.

Previous in vitro experiments on synovial metabolism have shown that the presence of rheumatoid disease in the synovial membrane resulted in marked metabolic changes1. The rate of uptake of oxygen was greatly altered by the presence of the disease, for example, normal synovium (of traumatic origin) Q O 2 (N) 1.0 up to Q O 2 (N) 35.0 in very active disease states. A crude relationship was found to exist between the macroscopic appearance of the pathological material and the rate of uptake of oxygen. As the change in uptake of oxygen was so marked in the rheumatoid synovia, we felt that some quantitative relationship might exist between the rate of uptake of oxygen and the state of the disease. The problem, therefore, was to obtain a quantitative method for expressing the pathological changes in the diseased synovium.