BACKGROUND Safety data on cancer risks following tumour necrosis factor α inhibitors (TNFi) in patients with spondyloarthritis (SpA) (here defined as ankylosing spondylitis (AS), undifferentiated spondarthropaties (SpA UNS), psoriatic arthritis (PsA)) are scarce. Our objective was to assess risks for cancer overall and for common subtypes in patients with SpA treated with TNFi compared with TNF...

BACKGROUND The increasing occurrence of livestock-associated (LA) methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) associated with the clonal complex (CC) 398 within the past years shows the importance of standardized and comparable typing methods for the purposes of molecular surveillance and outbreak detection. Multiple-locus variable number of tandem repeats analysis (MLVA) has recently be...

We examined the possibility of adapting the LuminoTox, a recently-commercialized bioanalytical testing procedure initially developed for aqueous samples, to assess the toxic potential of sediments. This portable fluorescent biosensor uses photosynthetic enzyme complexes (PECs) to rapidly measure photosynthetic efficiency. LuminoTox testing of 14 CRM (Certified Reference Material) sediments was ...

BACKGROUND Clinical and preclinical data demonstrate the analgesic actions of adenosine. Central administration of adenosine agonists, however, suppresses arousal and breathing by poorly understood mechanisms. This study tested the two-tailed hypothesis that adenosine A1 receptors in the pontine reticular formation (PRF) of C57BL/6J mice modulate breathing, behavioral arousal, and PRF acetylcho...

The aim of the present work is to compare drug survival and safety of infliximab, etanercept, and adalimumab (tumor necrosis factor [TNF] antagonists) in spondylarthritis (SpA) with those of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). To this purpose, we analysed the data in BIOBADASER (2000-2005), a drug registry launched in 2000 for long-term follow-up of the safety of these biologics in rheumatic diseases. T...

Molecular characterization of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) isolates in three different Arab world countries (West Bank of Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq) was the aim of the study presented here. This is done on the basis of spa sequencing and staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing. The majority (92%) of the spa-tested isolates belonged to spa type t932 and pos...

A 77-year-old woman who used her spa pool at least twice a day to relieve pain from osteoarthritis, developed progressive breathlessness, impaired pulmonary function, and radiographic changes consistent with hypersensitivity pneumonitis-like lung disease. M ycobacterium avium-intracellulare complex (MAC) was cultured from bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. Transbronchial biopsies revealed non-necrot...

OBJECTIVE The main objective of this study was to compare disease burden in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and axial spondyloarthritis (ax-SpA). METHODS In this cross-sectional study, all the RA (1093), PsA (365) and ax-SpA (333) patients who visited the out-patient clinic of the Hospital of Southern Norway Trust during the year 2013 were included; the RA patients all ha...