The clinical features of a group of 79 patients with older age onset rheumatoid arthritis (ORA) were compared with those of a group of 414 patients with younger age onset rheumatoid arthritis. The ORA group contained approximately equal numbers of men and women, were less rheumatoid factor positive, had a raised erythrocyte sedimentation rate, lower HLA-DR4 positivity, and a tendency towards la...

We applied nonparametric quantitative trait linkage analysis to two rheumatoid arthritis quantitative phenotypes, IgM rheumatoid factor (RF) and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide autoantibody titer measurements, using 5700 genome-wide Illumina single-nucleotide polymorphism genotypes on 658 Caucasian North American Rheumatoid Arthritis Consortium families. Peak LOD scores for both quantitative ...

OBJECTIVES To analyse changes in the rates of hospital admission and use of orthopaedic surgery to the lower limbs in Swedish patients with rheumatoid arthritis between 1987 and 2001. METHODS Data for all rheumatoid patients admitted to hospital between 1987 and 2001 were abstracted from the Swedish National Hospital Discharge Register (SNHDR). The data in the register are collected prospecti...

Background: Graves’ disease is an autoimmune disease, characterized by the presence of antibodies directed to TSH receptor or nearby regions as well as antibodies to double strands DNA (dsDNA) anticardiolipin and nuclear antibodies. This study evaluated anticardiolipin and rheumatoid factor, such as IgA and IgM antibodies in patients with Graves’ disease. Patients and methods: Anticardiolipin a...

Background: Anti-CCP is a test commonly used for the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. The aim of this study was to determine the diagnostic values of ACCP compared to anti-MCV in rheumatoid arthritis patients in north of Iran. Methods: The serum samples of 150 RA patients and 75 controls, with the mean age of 49.6+11.8 and 48.8+12 years respectively, were tested using the commercially availa...

CONFLICT OF INTEREST none declared. AIM Rheumatoid arthritis is considered a clinical syndrome across several disease subsets characterized by systemic inflammation, persistent synovitis, and autoantibodies. Our aim was to assess the distribution of risk factors among people diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in the adult population of Tirana, the capital city of Albania. METHODS All indiv...

Anti-idiotypic antibodies to four monoclonal IgM, one polyclonal IgM, and one polyclonal IgA rheumatoid factors were produced in rabbits and tested for cross reactivity with rheumatoid factors from nine patients with essential mixed cryoglobulinaemia, three patients with rheumatoid arthritis, four patients with systemic sicca syndrome, and one patient with systemic lupus erythematosus. Variable...

The rheumatoid polyarthritis is the most frequent chronic polyarthritis. It affects essentially the woman between 40 and 60 years. Rheumatic subcutaneous nodules and tenosynovitis are usually associated with seropositive symptomatic rheumatoid polyarthritis. It is, however, rare that they constitute the essential clinical expression of the disease. In this case, it makes dispute another excepti...

BACKGROUND Epidemiologic data indicates that rheumatoid arthritis is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Epicardial adipose tissue is a novel cardio-metabolic risk factor. Our aim was to evaluate epicardial fat thickness (EFT) using echocardiography in patients with rheumatoid arthritis compared to healthy control subjects. Secondly, we investigated relationship between epica...