BACKGROUND Patients with rheumatoid arthritis often have degeneration of the ankle and ipsilateral hindfoot joints. Patients with rheumatoid arthritis undergoing total ankle arthroplasty have a higher risk of wound breakdown and infection. We compared intermediate-term clinical outcomes after total ankle arthroplasty in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and patients with noninflammatory arthri...

Platelet releasing activity was found in sera fractionated by 30% ammonium sulphate in seven of 11 patients with systemic rheumatoid vasculitis, two of 16 patients with cutaneous rheumatoid vasculitis, and three of 18 patients with clinically uncomplicated rheumatoid arthritis. Serial studies in three patients suggest a key role of platelet activation by serum factors in the pathogenesis of sys...

A sensitive radioimmunoassay has been applied to the study of rheumatoid factor activity of IgM and IgG subclasses in serum and synovial fluid of patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Although rheumatoid factor activity was found in all four subclasses, its distribution was not the same as that of the total subclasses in normal sera. Results are discussed in relation to the possible clinical valu...

A solid-phase radioimmunoassay was developed to detect immunoglobulin (Ig)E antibodies that bound to human IgG. IgE-rheumatoid factor activity was found in the serum of 18 of 20 patients with seropositive rheumatoid arthritis, 1 of 4 patients with seronegative rheumatoid arthritis, 3 of 32 patients with seronegative rheumatoid arthritis, 3 of 32 patients with asthma, and in 1 patient with hypoc...

pulmonary parenchymal involvement in the disease. Patterson and co-workers3 found diffuse lung involvement in nine of 702 rheumatoid patients and noted more common occurrence in men. Pleuritis with effusion, the most common pulmonary manifestation,' is often transient, asymptomatic and develops at any stage of rheumatoid disease. In many instances pleural biopsy reveals only chronic idammatory ...

BACKGROUND Early diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis allows prompt initiation of antirheumatic therapy, which is associated with improved outcome. The use of IgM rheumatoid factor, the most widely used serologic test in assisting the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, is limited by low specificity. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay test detecting antibodies to cyclic citrullinated peptide (CCP...

An investigation of lung function was carried out in 99 randomly selected patients with calssic or definite rheumatoid arthritis and in 60 control subjects matched for age, sex, and smoking habits. Mean FEV1 and mean VC were both significantly lower in the rheumatoid patients due to significant differences for women but mean FEV/VC ratio was 73.0% in the rheumatoid group and 72.1% in the contro...

The present case-control study was conducted to investigate the relationship between smoking and rheumatoid arthritis, and to investigate formally the interaction between sex, smoking, and risk for developing rheumatoid arthritis. The study was performed in the Central District of Finland. Cases were patients with rheumatoid arthritis and the control group was a random sample of the general pop...

OBJECTIVES To estimate the complement activating properties of monoclonal, monoreactive, and polyreactive IgM rheumatoid factors derived from Epstein-Barr virus transformed B cells isolated from peripheral blood and synovial tissue of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS An enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to measure the activation of the classical pathway of com...

conclusions our findings suggest that there is an association between the mthfr c677t polymorphism and susceptibility for the development of ra. results our results showed significant differences between the groups with respect to mthfr c677t genotype (p = 0.015) and allele frequencies (0.004). statistical analysis showed that there is no relation between gender, age, and ra risk. however, we fo...