A team of researchers St. James Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, conducted a study that found the erectile dysfunction (ED) has a higher prevalence in men who have rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Previous studies have linked erectile dysfunction to vascular events, such as stroke and heart attacks, but this study indicates that there ...
In one of the most exciting discoveries, researchers at the Hanson Institute in Adelaide and the St. Vincent’s Institute in Melbourne believe they have made great progress on developing a new treatment which will ‘stop’ leukemia and inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and asthma.
The discovery relates to the way ...
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an auto-immune, inflammatory disease. People with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have higher levels of inflammatory proteins, called cytokines, and other cytokine related factors in their blood. According to a recent study, those markers are present as many as three years before any RA symptoms emerge.
Previous studies have ...
Researchers at Imperial College London (officially The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) have identified a protein that acts as a “master switch” for certain white blood cells to govern whether they increase or impede inflammation. The results of this study could lead to the development of new treatments ...
A report published today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 300,000 children in the U.S. suffer from some from of arthritis. Included in that estimate are some 50,000 to 100,000 that suffer from juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, a disease that can lead to permanent joint damage.
This report, published in the December issue of Arthritis Care & Research, says that 1 in 250 children under the age of 18 have been diagnosed with arthritis of another rheumatologic condition.
The study was lead by Dr. Jeffrey Sacks, an epidemiologist with the CDRC. His team studied information from doctor’s offices and emergency rooms across the U.S. One of the findings was that arthritis in children led to 744, 000 doctor visits and 83,000 emergency room visits annually.
This is the first comprehensive national estimate of kids with arthritis. It includes a state-by-state estimate of kids diagnosed with arthritis or other rheumatologic conditions. The report indicates the incidence ranges from a low of 500 kids in Wyoming to a high of 38,000 in California.
They also found that many of these children must travel long distances to receive specialized care. According to their analysis, 15,000 children with arthritis are residents of 11 states which have no pediatric rheumatologist. On average, children with arthritis must travel 57 miles to see a specialist. Those states are Alaska, Idaho, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, South Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Dr. Patience White, Arthritis Foundation chief public health officer and a pediatric rheumatologist, says “Due to the lack of availability of pediatric rheumatologists trained in the diagnosis and care of children with arthritis, we know that many children with inflammatory forms of arthritis are not diagnosed early enough to prevent disability”.
In addition, Dr. Suzanne Bowyer, pediatric rheumatologist at the Indiana University School of Medicine stated that kids might bounce from one doctor to another before one that is familiar with the disease makes an accurate diagnosis. She also says that “Pediatricians and emergency room doctors might miss the signs of the more serious form of arthritis and could send kids home without the proper treatment”.
A provision of the proposed Arthritis Prevention, Control and Cure Act introduced in 2004 called for a better determination of the size of the childhood arthritis problem. Passage of the Arthritis Prevention, Control and Cure Act is necessary as it would encourage more physicians to enter the field and also would highlight the research needs for children with arthritis.
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Originally posted 2007-12-05 19:55:29. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Increasingly, younger men are experiencing aches and pains which were primarily associated with old age. Physicians at the University of Connecticut (UCONN) Health Center say “young” arthritis is a mounting health concern.
Hip conditions are often attributed to anatomical abnormalities that begin early in life or result from overuse through repetitive motion, as seen in baseball. Femoro-acetabular impingement (FAI), also known as hip impingement, occurs when there is a change in the bony form of the hip joint, resulting in decreased range of motion and pain. Simply put, it is too much friction in the hip joint. It is not uncommon for doctors to misdiagnose hip impingements and dysplasias as growing pains.
But due to recent improved understanding of hip abnormalities, along with advances in diagnostic imaging techniques and minimally invasive surgery, many patients are given new hope for relieving chronic, misdiagnosed hip pain.
“This is a relatively new diagnosis or a new evolution of arthritis that we didn’t know occurred, “ said Dr. Michael Meneghini, an orthopedic surgeon at UCONN Health Center. “And we’re now recognizing arthritis years before it happens in a pre-arthritic state if you will.“
Dr. Meneghini said he’s seeing men in their early twenties come in with symptoms. “The patients will present with pain some times flexing their hip—sometimes going up and down stairs—sometimes squatting down playing with their kids. Those kinds of activities they’ll notice they’ll get pain in their groin or pain in the outside of their hip.“
Unfortunately, a young patient with persistent hip pain who is not properly diagnosed and treated may face early arthritis and eventually require a total hip replacement.
However, new options have been identified by hip specialists to slow or reverse the progression of degenerative hip disease. This results in their patients returning to their normal activities and, in some cases, reducing the need for more extensive surgeries.
“In the past few years, the understanding of hip structural abnormalities has increased, allowing specialists to better identify underlying hip conditions that previously went unrecognized and to more accurately diagnose hip problems,” said Douglas E. Padgett, M.D., chief of the Hip Service and co-director of the newly formed Center for Hip Pain and Preservation at Hospital for Special Surgery. “Health insurance companies also now readily recognize the value of hip preservation procedures and, depending on one’s coverage, reimburse their cost.”
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Originally posted 2009-11-17 07:00:08. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
In a properly functioning immune system, the immune cells are supposed to die after attacking an invading bacteria or virus. This process of cell death is called apoptosis.
“In apoptosis, a cell quietly dies off and gets removed from the system. That’s the way our body has of renewing itself all the time. In your stomach you have it, in your skin you have it. Almost all of your cells eventually die off and you get new cells.” says researcher Harris Perlman, of the Northwestern University Division of Rheumatology at Feinberg School of Medicine.
However, in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients, the immune system macrophages, or white blood cells, don’t die, but continue to proliferate in the blood. These cells tend to build up in the joints, attacking the healthy bone and cartilage, resulting in pain and inflammation.
There are no current effective and nontoxic methods to stop this overproduction.
But recently, Perlman and a team of researchers from the Feinberg School of Medicine discovered that immune cells in RA are deficient in the Bim, or suicide, molecule, which controls the cell’s self destruct mechanism. The team then set out to create an imitation of the Bim molecule, called the BH3 mimetic.
The researchers then injected the new drug into mice with rheumatoid arthritis and it floated into the macrophages like a ghost, leading to its nickname – Casper the Ghost.
The new drug not only resulted in the immune cells self destructing, the researchers found the disease went into remission. In their research, they also noted that the BH3 mimetic molecule reduced joint swelling and bone loss.
“This new therapy stopped the disease cold in 75 percent of the mice,” said Perlman. “The best part was we didn’t see any toxicity. This has a lot of potential for creating an entirely new treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.”
In the future Perlman and his team plan to create a better system to deliver the drug, to make it more targeted and enable it to live longer in the body. He estimates that it will be five to ten years before a viable drug would be available if the therapy lives up to its promise.
The study was published in the February issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism.
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Originally posted 2010-02-11 07:00:41. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Scientists have found that in countries where parasitic infections are common the incidence of autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, type-1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, is relatively small. One hypothesis is that a chemical secreted by parasitic worms may have anti-inflammatory properties. If true, it may lead to a potential treatment for rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Previous research has discovered that the parasitic filarial nematode worm secretes a large molecule called ES-62 and that this molecule exerts anti-inflammatory action in laboratory cultures. Researchers from the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde are preparing to delve further into the possibilities of utilizing ES-62 as a treatment for RA.
Led by Professor Margaret Harnett, at the University of Glasgow’s Division of Immunology, Infection and Inflammation, the team is hoping to produce a synthetic form of ES-62 for use in developing an anti-inflammatory drug that can be used to treat inflammatory diseases.
There are tens of millions of people in the tropics that are infected by parasitic worms, all of whom have ES-62 in their bloodstream. This prevents the inflammatory response that accompanies the conditions that the worms can cause, such as elephantiasis. As far as they have found, ES-62 has no known adverse affects on general health, nor does it affect the ability to fight other infections.
According to Prof. William Harnett of the University of Strathclyde: “We will be focusing on mechanisms of combating hyper-inflammation that have developed naturally and with apparent acceptance by humans during their co-evolution with parasites.”
Professor Iain McInnes of the Unversity of Glasgow, another member of the research team, said: “ES-62 appears to act like a thermostat to effectively turn down disease-causing inflammation which leaves essential defence mechanisms intact to fight infection and cancer.
The research is being funded by a three-year grant of £213,700 from the Arthritis Research Campaign.
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Originally posted 2008-09-17 20:19:45. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Gout is a form of arthritis that is caused by an excess of uric acid in the bloodstream. This causes crystals to form in the joints, typically in the big toe.
Results of a recent research project, carried out by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, indicates that people with existing risk factors for heart disease may have an increased risk for heart attack or stroke if they also develop gout.
The study involved over 9,000 men who were between 41 and 63 years old. They all had above average risk for heart disease, with factors such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure and smoking.
The researchers found that after 17 years the men who developed gout were 30% more likely to die from cardiac arrest or other cardiovascular disease than those without gout.
Not all men with elevated uric acid levels develop gout. Men in this study that had high levels of uric acid, but did not develop gout, did not have a higher risk of cardiovascular related death.
This study supports the findings in a 2004 study of 1,423 middle aged Finnish men. That research found that men with excess uric acid in the blood had a 250% greater risk of death from cardiovascular disease than those with normal levels.
One theory is that an excess of uric acid in the bloodstream causes “oxidative stress”, which results in the LDL cholesterol being oxidized. Oxidized LDL is viewed as more dangerous because it causes hardening and narrowing of the arteries.
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Originally posted 2008-07-22 21:20:25. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Methotrexate is a drug commonly used for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) that belongs to a class of drugs known as disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARD). It is one of a number of treatments available for RA.
That may change. According to a drug trial that was presented at the American College of Rheumatology in San Francisco indicates that methotrexate, when used in combination with tocilizumab, resulted in remission in 47% of the patients. This compares to only 8% for patients on methotrexate alone.
The trial involved nearly 1,200 patients from 15 countries with moderate RA who did not show adequate response to methotrexate. In addition to the significant remission rate, the use of tocilizumab with methotrexate slowed the structural damage of the joints by 85%, compared with 67% for those on methotrexate alone.
According to study leader Professor Paul Emery of Leeds University, “Results of this pivotal study convincingly demonstrate that tocilizumab can effectively and rapidly diminish the painful and debilitating effects of RA.
“These trial findings are significant because it is critical to stop joint damage as quickly as possible to avoid joint deformity and to help people with RA maintain their quality of life.”
Tocilizumab works differently than current standard treatments. It is a lab created antibody which blocks the activity of interleukin-6, which is an immune system signaling protein that acts as both a pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory.
There were some side effects of the combination treatment including respiratory infections, high blood pressure and headache.
Tocilizumab, which is manufactured by Roche and will be sold under the name RoActemra, has not yet been approved for use by US or European regulators.
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Originally posted 2008-10-28 14:00:12. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an auto-immune, inflammatory disease. People with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have higher levels of inflammatory proteins, called cytokines, and other cytokine related factors in their blood. According to a recent study, those markers are present as many as three years before any RA symptoms emerge.
Previous studies have shown that other markers exist several years before the onset of symptoms of RA. These include certain antibodies, such as rheumatoid factor and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (CCP) antibodies.
The current study, conducted by Heidi Kokkonen, MSc, of Umea University Hospital in Sweden, and colleagues, included data from 85 RA patients from a population based registry in Northern Sweden. These patients had donated blood samples before the onset of their RA symptoms. Each of these patients was matched with three randomly selected controls from the same registry based on sex, age, where they lived and the time of the blood sample.
The researchers found that 50 of the 85 patients had higher levels of the cytokines than the controls. They also found the same evidence for the cytokine related factors.
In addition, the researchers also found that there was a significant relationship between the elevated levels of cytokines and the presence of anti-CCP antibodies.
These results could lead to the development of a blood test for early diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis.
“Our findings present an opportunity for better predicting the risk of developing RA and possibly preventing disease progression.”
Researcher Solbritt Rantapää-Dahlqvist, MD, of University Hospital in Umea, Sweden.
The authors of the study acknowledged that there were statistical limitations in the analysis, particularly in terms of power and the potential effects of storage time of the samples.
The results of the study were published in the February issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism
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Originally posted 2010-02-15 07:00:10. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Increasingly, younger men are experiencing aches and pains which were primarily associated with old age. Physicians at the University of Connecticut (UCONN) Health Center say “young” arthritis is a mounting health concern. 
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