INTRODUCTION Giant cell arteritis (GCA) is an autoimmune disease commonest in Northern Europe and Scandinavia. Previous studies report various associations with HLA-DRB1*04 and HLA-DRB1*01; HLA-DRB1 alleles show a gradient in population prevalence within Europe. Our aims were (1) to determine which amino acid residues within HLA-DRB1 best explained HLA-DRB1 allele susceptibility and protective ...

Sirs, Giant cell arteritis (GCA) is the most common systemic vasculitis in individuals over the age of 50 years in Western countries (1, 2). GCA is a polygenic disease and different genes may influence the phenotype and the outcome of this condition (3). Inflammatory cytokines, such as interferongamma (IFN-γ), play a role in the pathogenesis of GCA (4). A CA repeat polymorphism in the first int...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the risk of cerebrovascular disease and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in patients with giant cell arteritis (GCA), and to identify predictors. METHODS The UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink 1991-2010 was used for a parallel cohort study of 5827 patients with GCA and 37,090 age-, sex-, and location-matched controls. A multivariable competing risk model (non-cerebrovasc...

Tan et al recently described a case of ''resistant giant cell arteritis'' successfully treated with etanercept. 1 Their patient, who had classical symptoms of polymyalgia rheu-matica (PMR), developed headaches while receiving low dose steroids. Biopsy of a temporal artery showed no arteritis. Because giant cell arteritis (GCA) was suspected on clinical grounds, high dose steroids were institute...

We show how data parallel operations can be implemented on a Global Cellular Automaton (GCA). For this purpose we implement a number of frequently used functions of the language APL. APL has been chosen because of the ability to express matrix and vector operations in a short and concise manner. It is shown how various operations on vectors and matrices can be executed through the execution of ...

Death due to giant cell arteritis (GCA) is rare, and is usually caused by coronary or vertebral arteritis in the acute phase of the disease. A case of fatal GCA is reported in a woman with a normal erythrocyte sedimentation rate, who had been treated for temporal arteritis for eight months. Post mortem examination showed a dissection and thrombosis of the intracranial portion of the left verteb...

Whereas giant cell arteritis (GCA) was considered a rare disease 50 years ago, the generalized arteritis is now recognized as an important and significant cause of morbidity in elderly people; its cause and pathogenesis is poorly understood. Glucocorticosteroids are the drug of choice in all clinical types of GCA. In contrast to corticosteroids, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs have no prov...

Giant cell arteritis (GCA) is a chronic vasculitis that typically presents with headache, fever and polymyalgia although atypical presentations are known. We present a case of GCA with nonproductive cough and pyrexia of unknown origin emphasizing this atypical nature of presentation. We report a rare association of GCA with granulomatous hepatitis. We also support the use of PET scanning in dia...

Giant cell arteritis (GCA) is well-recognized as an important cause of headache in the elderly. It is also an important element of the differential diagnosis for patients with transient or permanent visual loss. Delay in diagnosis of GCA can lead to blindness. Therefore, clinicians should be alert to atypical presentations in which headache is either not prominent or absent. We present a patien...