Search for: rheumatoid arthritis methotrexate autoimmune disease biomarker gene expression GWAS HLA genes non-HLA genes
| ID | PMID | Title | PublicationDate | abstract |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8358980 | Better effect of methotrexate on C-reactive protein during daily compared to weekly treatm | 1993 Jun | Treatment with methotrexate (MTX) is well established in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), but dosing remains arbitrary as studies on the effect of different dosing schedules are lacking. In a randomised crossover design of 20 patients with RA, the effect of low (2.5mg) oral daily doses of MTX (15 mg weekly) was compared to intermittent weekly dosing (15 mg). C-reactive protein (CRP) values were lower and more stable on daily dosing compared to the significant (p < 0.05) changes in CRP observed during treatment with the same weekly dose. It may be postulated that nonresponders or patients with dose-dependent side effects may have clinical advantage from daily MTX dosing if hepatotoxicity and other side effects are not increased. | |
| 8441307 | Management of the patient with rheumatic diseases going to surgery. | 1993 Mar | This article reviews the perioperative management of rheumatoid arthritis, gout, systemic lupus erythematosus, scleroderma, and ankylosing spondylitis. It discusses the unique interactions between each rheumatologic disease and a surgical challenge and provides guidelines for the assessment of patients preoperatively. The available literature on surgical risks is analyzed, and approaches are suggested to both reduce postoperative complications and control the rheumatic disease. It is hoped that this will aid the internist in evaluating and treating the rheumatic patient undergoing surgery. | |
| 1582122 | Plasma viscosity and erythrocyte sedimentation rate in inflammatory and non-inflammatory r | 1992 Mar | Plasma viscosity (PV) and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) are considered to reflect the complex of acute phase reactants in inflammations. Both tests were studied with regard to their ability to discriminate between inflammatory and non-inflammatory rheumatic diseases. PV and ESR were measured using the Coulter Viscometer II and the Westergren method, respectively. ESR was found to be a better parameter for rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis than PV, independent of the chosen reference values, age, gender and the hemoglobin level. ESR may still be regarded as an acceptable parameter for monitoring inflammatory rheumatic diseases. | |
| 8003055 | Long-term effect of omega-3 fatty acid supplementation in active rheumatoid arthritis. A 1 | 1994 Jun | OBJECTIVE: To study the long-term effects of supplementation with omega-3 fatty acids (omega 3) in patients with active rheumatoid arthritis. METHODS: Ninety patients were enrolled in a 12-month, double-blind, randomized study comparing daily supplementations with either 2.6 gm of omega 3, or 1.3 gm of omega 3 + 3 gm of olive oil, or 6 gm of olive oil. RESULTS: Significant improvement in the patient's global evaluation and in the physician's assessment of pain was observed only in those taking 2.6 gm/day of omega 3. The proportions of patients who improved and of those who were able to reduce their concomitant antirheumatic medications were significantly greater with 2.6 gm/day of omega 3. CONCLUSION: Daily supplementation with 2.6 gm of omega 3 results in significant clinical benefit and may reduce the need for concomitant antirheumatic medication. | |
| 1472643 | Mediators of joint swelling and damage in rheumatoid arthritis and pristane induced arthri | 1992 | Joint swelling and tenderness in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) probably result from IgG aggregates activating complement with the consequent attraction of polymorphonuclear leucocytes (PMNs) and the liberation of their granule enzymes such as kininogenases. By contrast IL-1 and TNF are the major stimulants of cartilage and bone loss although other agents contribute. The fundamental drive for the production of these mediators is unknown but a role for heat shock proteins is suggested from work on pristane induced arthritis. | |
| 7540527 | Felty's syndrome treated with rhG-CSF associated with flare of arthritis and skin rash. | 1995 Mar | A patient with Felty's syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis was treated with recombinant granulocyte stimulating factor rhG-CSF (Neupogen) in view of severe neutropenia. He had a prompt rise in his neutrophil count and associated with this a severe flare of his arthritis and a skin rash. rhG-CSF was stopped, his neutrophil count fell rapidly and his symptoms resolved. rhG-CSF and the resulting rise in neutrophil count may be associated with flare of autoimmune disease in susceptible individuals. | |
| 8376451 | Arthroscopic ankle arthrodesis. | 1993 Sep | We performed arthrodesis of the ankle in eight patients by arthroscopic joint excision and fixation with crossed tibiotalar compression screws. Two patients had rheumatoid arthritis and six had post-traumatic osteoarthritis. None had a serious deformity of the ankle. Clinical ankylosis was achieved in all cases and there was radiological evidence of bone fusion in four. | |
| 9081509 | [Health care status of rheumatic patients in rheumatologic centers 1993]. | 1996 Dec | Since 1992 the Federal Minister of Health has supported 21 arthritis centres in all regions of Germany. Their major aim is to improve collaboration between the various experts involved in the health care of arthritis patients. Results of the uniform patient documentation are presented. Compared to previous reports, the collaboration in outpatient care seems to have improved: the majority of patients seen in specialized care is referred within the first two years. Nevertheless, only less than one fourth of the true prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis has been seen by the specialists. There are still deficits concerning comprehensive care like occupational therapy, patient education, and psychological support in coping with pain. There is also a deficit concerning early rehabilitation. This is associated with a high rate of early retirement: 30% of the patients in the working age with a disease duration of five years or more have been retired for health reasons. As it was described in the USA, we found an association of formal education and functional status in patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis: after having controlled for age, sex, and duration of disease, it became evident that patients with a low educational level have a significantly lower functional capacity. | |
| 8278818 | Personal experience in the treatment of seropositive rheumatoid arthritis with drugs used | 1993 Oct | Drug therapy for seropositive rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is entirely empiric. Single agents often fail to control synovial inflammation adequately. Combination therapy with relatively small doses of several agents shown to be effective in controlled trials when used alone often produce sustained and marked therapeutic control. Adverse effects are frequent but probably are no greater than those associated with the use of an effective dose of a single agent. As in the treatment of malignancy or tuberculosis, the use of potent drugs in combination may prevent or delay the clonal expansion of resistant cells. If this is indeed the case in the treatment of RA, then consideration should be given to the routine use of drug combinations. It is conceivable that we do patients a disservice by using potentially valuable drugs sequentially rather than in tandem. Whatever its merits, combination drug therapy for seropositive RA is clearly a stopgap measure whose usefulness will end as more specific means of controlling joint inflammation become available. | |
| 8295833 | Determinants of exercise and aerobic fitness in outpatients with arthritis. | 1994 Jan | Factors that influenced exercise behaviors and aerobic fitness were identified in 100 outpatients with rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis. Data included perceived health status, benefits of and barriers to exercise, and impact of arthritis on health; demographic and biologic characteristics; and past exercise behavior. Exercise measures included range-of-motion and strengthening exercises, 7-day activity recall, and the exercise subscale of the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile. An aerobic fitness level was obtained on each subject by bicycle ergometer testing. The theoretical model predicted 20% of the variance in composite exercise scores but none of the variance in aerobic fitness levels. Perceived benefits of exercise was a significant predictor of exercise participation. Subjects with less formal education, longer duration of arthritis, and higher impact of arthritis scores perceived fewer benefits of exercise, while subjects who reported exercising in their youth perceived more benefits of exercise. | |
| 7762885 | Noninvasive acceleration measurements to characterize knee arthritis and chondromalacia. | 1995 Jan | Devising techniques and instrumentation for early detection of knee arthritis and chondromalacia presents a challenge in the domain of biomedical engineering. The purpose of the present investigation was to characterize normal knees and knees affected by osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and chondromalacia using a set of noninvasive acceleration measurements. Ultraminiature accelerometers were placed on the skin over the patella in four groups of subjects, and acceleration measurements were obtained during leg rotation. Acceleration measurements were significantly different in the four groups of subjects in the time and frequency domains. Power spectral analysis revealed that the average power was significantly different for these groups over a 100-500 Hz range. Noninvasive acceleration measurements can characterize the normal, arthritis, and chondromalacia knees. However, a study on a larger group of subjects is indicated. | |
| 1546019 | Complications of cervical arthritis. | 1992 Mar | Cervical arthritis can result in clinically important complications through a variety of mechanisms. The potentially most serious complication is spinal cord or nerve root compression, caused by either degenerative osteophytes or one or more of several subluxation patterns prevalent in inflammatory joint diseases. Disabling pain arising directly from the affected joints is more difficult to document but probably occurs often in the upper cervical spine, particularly in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Limitation of head and neck mobility, with or without pain, commonly develops in inflammatory arthropathies, especially ankylosing spondylitis and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. In the absence of neurologic signs or symptoms, most cases of symptomatic cervical arthritis should be diagnosed and treated conservatively. | |
| 8619102 | Cyclosporine in rheumatoid arthritis. | 1995 Aug | Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory process of unknown etiology that leads to significant morbidity and accelerated mortality in the 10 to 15% of patients with severe proliferative and erosive synovitis that is unresponsive to conventional therapies. T cells play a key role in the initiation and perpetuation of the process. Based on its immune action, cyclosporine has been used in rheumatoid arthritis in a variety of worldwide clinical trials. This article presents the results of several pivotal studies and outlines the development of cyclosporine in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. | |
| 8465575 | [Subacute benign edematous polyarthritis in the elderly]. | 1993 Jan | Subacute edematous polyarthritis of the elderly is a recently described syndrome. The condition is characterized by its sudden onset and by the presence of important edema of the four limbs, symmetrical polyarthritis, marked inflammatory syndrome, and negative serological test for the rheumatoid factor. Men are predominantly affected, and many of them are carrying the HLA B-7 antigen. The illness subsides within a few months without sequelae. It seems that this syndrome should be clearly distinguished from late onset rheumatoid arthritis and polymyalgia rheumatica. | |
| 8912501 | HLA-DRB1 genes and disease severity in rheumatoid arthritis. The MIRA Trial Group. Minocyc | 1996 Nov | OBJECTIVE: To examine the effect of alleles encoding the "shared"/"rheumatoid" epitope on rheumatoid arthritis (RA) disease severity in patients who participated in the minocycline in RA (MIRA) trial. METHODS: Of 205 patients with a week-48 visit, blood was available for typing of HLA-DRB1 and HLA-DQB1 in 174 (85%) and successfully completed in 169 (82%). Baseline erosions were used to assess disease severity and new erosions at the last visit served as a proxy for progression. RESULTS: At baseline, there was no association between the presence of erosive disease or rheumatoid factor status and the dose of rheumatoid epitope (homozygous, heterozygous, none) or the specific alleles identified. At the final visit, a gradient was observed for the 3 allelic subgroups (and their gene doses) in the occurrence of new erosions among the Caucasian placebo-treated, but not the minocycline-treated, patients. A treatment group/HLA-DR4 epitope interaction was demonstrated in multivariate analyses. Approximately two-thirds of African-American patients did not have the rheumatoid epitope. CONCLUSION: HLA-DRB1 oligotyping may be useful in predicting the progression of disease in some Caucasian patients. Our study corroborates the infrequency of the epitope among African-American patients with RA. | |
| 7981987 | Type I collagen degradation product in serum of patients with early rheumatoid arthritis: | 1994 Nov | The new assay of cross-linked carboxyterminal telopeptide of type I collagen (ICTP), a serum marker for bone collagen degradation, was evaluated in serial measurements of 66 patients with early RA during a 3-yr prospective study. Initially 51% of RA patients had elevated levels of serum ICTP compared to healthy controls. During the subsequent months after starting anti-rheumatic treatment, the mean ICTP levels decreased in parallel with the clinical and laboratory variables measuring disease activity. Despite marked clinical improvement with anti-rheumatic treatment, a steady increase in radiological progression of joints was observed. Throughout the follow-up serum ICTP levels correlated with inflammatory parameters and from the first year on with the radiological changes assessed annually. However, initial serum ICTP levels correlated better than the other variables of disease activity with the subsequent erosive progression of joints indicating that measurement of serum ICTP may serve as one of the prognostic markers for joint damage in early RA. | |
| 7809909 | Osteoporosis in rheumatoid arthritis: a molecular biological aspect of connective tissue g | 1994 May | Osteoporosis, especially the juxtaarticular osteoporosis of involved joints, is a characteristic manifestation of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Histomorphometric studies suggest the existence of increased bone turnover in RA: impaired bone formation and hightened osteoclasic bone resorption. Recent studies show that important mediators in the pathogenesis of RA such as prostaglandin E, interleukin 1 (IL1) or tumor necrosis factor (TNF) alpha also play important roles in bone remodelling. Prostaglandin E2 promotes maturation of osteoclasts from hematopoietic precursor cells. IL1 inhibits collagen synthesis in osteoblasts. IL1 enhances collagenase and stromelysin gene expression and stimulates osteoclastic bone resorption. TNF alpha inhibits bone collagen synthesis and causes osteoclastic bone resorption. TNF alpha, and possibly IL1, enhances collagenase and stromelysin gene expression by stimulating the AP-1 promoter sites of the genes. Constitutive expression of c-fos induces joint destruction without lymphocyte infiltration in antigen-induced arthritis in mice, and supports cell growth of human rheumatoid synovial cells, possibly acting on the AP-1 sites. Furthermore, constitutive c-fos expression decreases collagen synthesis in osteoblasts and increases the mediator secretion from osteoblasts thereby stimulating osteoclastic bone resorption. These findings suggest that signal transduction through AP-1 transcriptional regulation sites may play an important role in the pathogenesis of joint destruction and osteoporosis in RA. | |
| 8852518 | Expression of a human fetal anti-DNA antibody idiotype BEG-2 beta in the families of patie | 1995 | BEG-2 is a monoclonal antibody produced by the human-human hybridoma technique from a 12 weeks old human fetus. A polyclonal antiserum was raised in an (NZW x Half-lop hybrid) rabbit against BEG-2 and the anti-BEG-2 anti-idiotype was purified and characterised. Using this rabbit reagent the expression of the BEG-2 beta idiotype was analysed in 12 patients with active rheumatoid arthritis and their close family members (n = 54). Twenty five sera from healthy controls were analysed to establish a normal range. Ten of 12 patients (83%) with rheumatoid arthritis expressed the BEG-2 idiotype as well as 11 of 54 healthy unaffected relatives (20%). | |
| 1384102 | Epitope specificity of antibodies to type II collagen in rheumatoid arthritis and systemic | 1992 | Antibodies to human type II collagen were examined in the sera of 105 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), 44 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and 11 patients who fulfilled the criteria of both diseases (RA-SLE overlap), using a solid-phase radioimmunoassay (RIA). The frequencies of antibodies to native and denatured human type II collagen were 20% and 27% in RA, 14% and 16% in SLE, and 45% and 36% in RA-SLE overlap. The specificity of the antibodies was further examined by inhibition with native and denatured type II collagen, by immunoblotting on native and denatured type II collagen, and by immunoblotting on cyanogen-bromide derived polypeptides of type II collagen. We could not identify any disease-specific patterns of reactivity. Thus, in the three disease groups the antibody response was polyclonal; there were antibody populations that reacted with native and/or denatured collagen, and epitopes could be assigned to at least three CB peptides, CB10.5, CB11 and CB8. | |
| 1386426 | Kinetics of 99mTc-labelled antibodies against CD4 (T-helper) lymphocytes in man. | 1992 Jun | The availability of radiolabeled anti-CD4 antibodies permitted the study of their kinetic behaviour. Four patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis were investigated prospectively. Three of them received 250 micrograms of 99mTc-labelled anti-CD4 antibody (MAX.16H5). One patient received in vitro 99mTc-antibody-labelled lymphocytes. 4% of the activity was excreted by the kidneys. From 4 to 24 h the splenic uptake decreased from 7.5 to 4%, the liver uptake increased from 25 to 30% the bone marrow uptake remained about the same 50% and the uptake of a single diseased joint (2%) increased slightly to 2.5%. 15 to 30 min after injection of the antibody a redistribution of labelled cells or antibody from liver and spleen to the circulating blood seemed to occur. The recovery rate (0-1 h) of in vivo labelled cells amounted to 30%, that of in vitro labelled cells to 19%. One patient was examined with in vitro labelled CD4-expressing lymphocytes. There was no difference in the antibody kinetics between in vitro and in vivo labelled cells. The authors suggest that circulating CD4-lymphocytes can be labelled with monoclonal antibodies. The kinetics of these in vitro labelled cells and the injected labelled antibody itself resembles that of recirculating lymphocytes. |