Spa therapy is frequently used in daily rheumatological practice, but its benefit remains to be evaluated. A prospective randomized controlled study was conducted in 1993 in patients with osteoarthritis of the hip, knee or lumbar spine. Treatment was either spa therapy at Vichy (France) of 3 weeks duration (spa group) or usual therapy (control group). Assessment criteria were pain (visual analo...

BACKGROUND In the broader spectrum of back pain, inflammatory back pain (IBP) is a symptom that may indicate axial spondyloarthritis (SpA). The objectives of this study were to determine the frequency of current IBP, as a hallmark sign of possible axial SpA, in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS), psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and other SpA and to compare self-reported health between the grou...

OBJECTIVE To investigate possible differences in Th1 and Th2 cytokine mRNA expression in the synovial tissue (ST) of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and seronegative spondyloarthropathies (SpA) with diagnostic and/or pathogenic interest. METHODS Eleven RA patients and 14 SpA patients (10 with undifferentiated spondyloarthropathy (USpA), two with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and two wit...

ST22-methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus type IV (ST22-MRSA-IV) is endemic in Irish hospitals and is designated antibiogram-resistogram type-pulsed-field group (AR-PFG) 06-01. Isolates of this highly clonal strain exhibit limited numbers of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) patterns and spa types. This study investigated whether combining PFGE and spa typing with DNA sequencing of...

The superficial palmar arch (SPA) of the hand is generally formed by the ulnar artery (UA) and superficial palmar branch of the radial artery (RA). Very rarely, however, the SPA is formed by the median artery (MA) and RA. This was termed the median-radial type (MRT) of SPA by Adachi in 1961 in Keen (Am. J. Anat. 108: 245-61). The recent use of the RA as a coronary artery bypass graft in myocard...

OBJECTIVE Spondyloarthritis (SpA) is an extraintestinal manifestation of inflammatory bowel disease with significant clinical effects, although the frequency is uncertain. We assessed the cumulative incidence and clinical spectrum of SpA in patients with Crohn's disease (CD) in a population-based cohort. METHODS The medical records of a population-based cohort of Olmsted County, Minnesota, re...

INTRODUCTION Spondylarthropathies (SpA) are characterized by abnormal immune responses including T cell activation. Cytotoxic T lymphocyte associated molecule-4 (CTLA-4) is involved in down-regulating immune responses. A soluble form of CTLA-4 (sCTLA-4), resulting from an alternative splicing, has been identified and was found increased in several autoimmune diseases. Here, we evaluated circula...

There is significant variability in diet-induced obesity (DIO) among humans and rodents, which has been associated with differences in intrinsic spontaneous physical activity (SPA). The orexin neuropeptides positively modulate SPA through multiple brain sites, but the effects of DIO on orexin's activity are not well understood. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that DIO sensitivity is med...

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that antitumor activity of staphylococcal protein A (SpA) is related to the composition of complexes formed in vivo with IgG. BALB/c mice were inoculated intradermally with 10(6) Meth A fibrosarcoma cells on day 0 and treated i.v. on days 3 and 7 with between 1 and 405 micrograms of SpA. The 45- and 15-micrograms doses significantly inhibited...

Plants sense vegetative shade as a reduction in the ratio of red light to far-red light (R:FR). Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) responds to a reduced R:FR with increased elongation of the hypocotyl and the leaf petioles as well as with an acceleration of flowering time. The repressor of light signaling, CONSTITUTIVELY PHOTOMORPHOGENIC1 (COP1), has been shown previously to be essential for th...