OBJECTIVE To assess the usefulness of 1T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of temporal arteries and to compare 1T MRI with duplex ultrasonography (US) and physical examination of temporal arteries for the diagnosis of giant cell arteritis (GCA) in patients with suspected GCA. METHOD The superficial temporal arteries of 20 consecutive patients with a suspected diagnosis of GCA were examined usi...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the clinical characteristics and imaging results (CDS, 18-FDG-PET) of patients with large vessel giant cell arteritis (LV-GCA) presenting as fever of unknown origin (FUO). METHODS From a series of 82 patients with GCA we identified 8 patients with FUO as initial disease manifestation. Clinical characteristics and results of CDS and 18-FDG-PET were analysed. Patients wit...

The interleukin-6 (IL-6)/JAK/STAT3 signaling pathway plays a central role in inflammation-mediated cancers, including gastric cancer (GCa). We evaluated associations between 10 potentially functional single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of four essential genes in the pathway and GCa risk in a study of 1,125 GCa cases and 1,221 cancer-free controls. We found that a significant higher GCa risk ...

OBJECTIVE Several reports of familial aggregation of giant cell arteritis (GCA) and polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) have been described although detailed genetic and immunological studies are scarce. Our aims were to investigate the influence of HLA-DRB1 alleles and to analyze the phenotype and T cell receptor (TCR) usage of circulating T lymphocytes in a familial case of GCA and PMR. METHODS HL...

Understanding how genetic variation is maintained begins with a comprehensive description of what types of genetic variation exist, the extent and magnitude of the variation, and patterns discernable in that variation. However, such studies have focused primarily on DNA sequence data and have ignored genetic variation at other hierarchical levels of genetic information. Microarray technology pe...

Although a glucocorticoid (GC)-sparing strategy is needed for patients with giant cell arteritis (GCA) suffering from refractory disease or serious treatment-related complications, evidence of efficacy in this setting of immunosuppressive drugs and biotherapies is lacking. Herein, we evaluated the GC-sparing effects and tolerability of addition of dapsone (DDS) to prednisone therapy in patients...

Interstitial lung disease (ILD) has rarely been reported as a manifestation of giant cell arteritis (GCA). We herein report a unique case of GCA in a 76-year-old woman who presented with ILD as an initial manifestation of GCA. Ten years before admission, she had been diagnosed with granulomatous ILD of unknown etiology. Corticosteroid therapy induced remission. One year after the cessation of c...

Polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) was defined in 1957 and is linked with giant cell arteritis (GCA) in approximately 25% of cases. The peak incidence is between 60 and 75 years old and is increasing with the ageing population. Polymyalgia rheumatica is a clinical diagnosis without a 'gold standard' serological or histological test and there are other conditions that may mimic PMR. Treatment with a d...

Background. Giant cell arteritis (GCA) is a systemic granulomatous vasculitis that affects large- and medium-sized arteries of the head and neck. Ocular manifestations of GCA usually are anterior ischaemic optic neuropathy (AION) or retinal vessel occlusion. Case Report. We report an interesting case of a 70-year-old man who presented with sudden vision loss and choroidal infarction in his left...