We read with interest the editorial by Veldhuijzen van Zanten and Kitas [1], in which they consider whether carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT) a surrogate marker of atherosclerosis might be a good predictor of future cardiovascular events in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). They state that it remains an open question, because no long-term studies have documented such an associa...

Rationale: Loss of Tbx1 and decrease of retinoic acid (RA) synthesis result in DiGeorge/velocardiofacial syndrome (DGS/VCFS)-like phenotypes in mouse models, including defects in septation of the outflow tract of the heart and anomalies of pharyngeal arch– derived structures including arteries of the head and neck, laryngeal–tracheal cartilage, and thymus/parathyroid. Wild-type levels of T-box ...

BACKGROUND During pregnancy, many patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) experience disease improvement, whereas patients with ankylosing spondylitis often suffer from persistent active disease. Here we investigated whether pregnancy-related changes in disease activity were associated with changes in the proportion and function of γδT cells. METHODS The study population comprised 55 patients...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are more prone for accelerated atherosclerosis and Asian Indians as an ethnic group are predisposed to a high risk of premature atherosclerosis. However, sparse data are available regarding the burden of atherosclerosis among asymptomatic adult patients with RA in south India. We studied the burden of asymptomatic atherosclerosis i...

Objective: Previous studies have examined the role of sensory nerves and neural mediators in symmetrical joint inflammation and autoimmunity in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In this study, we sought to examine the association between capsaicin skin test and disease activity in RA patients. Materials and Methods: Eighty RA patients (case group) and 20 healthy volunteers were enrolled in this experi...

The aim of the investigation was to assess the correlation between the main ultrasound indices of joints and clinical, laboratory and instrumental indices in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Materials and Methods. A total of 114 patients with RA underwent complex clinical, laboratory and instrumental examination, including clinical assessment of the patients’ health, according to RA act...

INTRODUCTION Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease and it is known that lymphocytes play a major role in its pathogenesis. However, there have been no comprehensive studies on the changes in peripheral blood lymphocyte (PBL) subpopulations expressing different clusters of differentiation (CD) in patients with long-lasting RA. OBJECTIVES The aim of our study was to measure ...

Over the last decades, there has been a plethora of interest in possible challenges encountered by researchers while publishing research articles (RAs) in various disciplines for English for academic purposes (EAP).Given this, this study aimed to examine how a sampled number of EAPIranian researchers perceive the competence of academic RA writing, the major reasons for RA rejection, and difficu...

NRL (neural retina leucine zipper) is a key basic motif-leucine zipper (bZIP) transcription factor, which orchestrates rod photoreceptor differentiation by activating the expression of rod-specific genes. The deletion of Nrl in mice results in functional cones that are derived from rod precursors. However, signaling pathways modulating the expression or activity of NRL have not been elucidated....