I is one of the important causes for the inflammation of the joint (arthritis). Microorganisms which include bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites can cause arthritis, which can be acute or chronic. Acute arthritis is generally caused by pyogenic bacteria and termed as septic arthritis. Chronic arthritis is generally caused by mycobacteria and fungi. In reactive arthritis and other forms of sp...

Radiosynoviorthesis (RSO) with an yttrium-90 colloid offers a local and minimally invasive therapy for treating inflammatory hypertrophy of the synovial membrane of the knee that has arisen from numerous kinds of disorder: these include rheumatoid arthritis (RA), osteoarthritis (OA), spondyloarthropathy, villonodular synovitis and others. There is substantial evidence that this treatment is eff...

OBJECTIVE To assess the performance in the detection of cases of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and the spondyloarthropathies (SpA) of a questionnaire suitable for use in telephone surveys conducted by patient interviewers. METHODS A questionnaire was designed with reference to the signs, symptoms, and epidemiological criteria for RA (ACR 1987) and SpA (ESSG 1991). Three groups of respondents were...

Undifferentiated spondyloarthropathy (USpA) includes the forms that do not meet criteria for the established categories of spondyloarthropathy. The clinical spectrum of USpA is therefore wide and few studies have been published on USpA, especially peripheral arthritis. A total of 107 patients fulfilling the European Spondyloarthropathy Study Group criteria for SpA were studied retrospectively b...

OBJECTIVE This study was aimed at assessing the diagnostic value of magnetic resonance (MR) in spinal diseases amongst observers having several levels of experience. METHODS A selection was made of 20 MR exams which were classified as being normal [10] or altered [10]; such classification was called "standard" and then compared to a second classification made by 15 observers having varying le...

A strong association between ERAP1 and ankylosing spondylitis (AS) was recently identified by the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium and the Australo-Anglo-American Spondylitis Consortium (WTCCC-TASC) study. ERAP1 is highly polymorphic with strong linkage disequilibrium evident across the gene. We therefore conducted a series of experiments to try to identify the primary genetic association...

The cellular immune response seems to be important for the pathogenesis of reactive arthritis (ReA) and a bacteria-specific lymphocyte proliferation (LP) is often found in synovial fluid (SF) of ReA patients. However, the role of the bacteria-specific LP in peripheral blood (PB) is less well defined. In this study, we investigated 215 paired samples of SF and PB from patients with ReA (n = 65),...

Chikungunya (CKG) is an arthritogenic mosquito-transmitted alphavirus that manifests itself as a febrile illness and often progresses to severe and incapacitating polyarthralgia (1). Several reports have demonstrated persistent polyarthritis akin to seronegative peripheral arthropathy (2). However, to our knowledge, imaging-confirmed axial disease has not been described in this context. We repo...

Hypertrophy and inflammation of the synovium with various underlying pathologies - such as rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, haemophilia and spondyloarthropathy - can be treated successfully by radiosynoviorthesis (RSO). For medium-sized joints (shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip and ankle), the radionuclide of choice is rhenium-186. We review the evidence for the efficacy of this local, relativel...