This uncontrolled intervention study explored the effects of stone spa use on the psychological states of women. Sixty-eight female volunteers (mean age 37.5 years (standard deviation 14.8)) recruited at a women-only stone spa facility participated in the study. They completed the short-form Profile of Moods States (POMS) and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) before and after stone spa u...

By responding to the current emphasis on health and wellness in modern society, the spa industry has experienced a rapid growth in the last two decades. To understand the determinants of revisitation and long-term attitudinal loyalty, this study investigated how visitors perceive the potential value of spa experiences. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of two distinct dimensions...

Ileocolonoscopic evidence for subclinical gut inflammation is found in a subpopulation of spondyloarthropathy (SpA) patients. The prevalence of microscopic intestinal lesions is even higher and can be classified as either an acute or a chronic type of inflammation. The latter condition is associated with an increased risk of developing overt inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), especially Crohn’s ...

OBJECTIVE Acute lung injury (ALI), is a major cause of morbidity and mortality, which is routinely treated with the administration of systemic glucocorticoids. The current study investigated the distribution and therapeutic effect of a dexamethasone(DXM)-loaded immunoliposome (NLP) functionalized with pulmonary surfactant protein A (SP-A) antibody (SPA-DXM-NLP) in an animal model. METHODS DXM...

anomaly that coincides with the SPA interioris exposed in the eastern and southeastern portion of this basin. This FeOenriched signature is interpreted to represent SPA-derived material, and samples collected within this region may be analyzed to determine the age of the oldest basin preserved on the Moon. Red and pink pixels indicate the presence of pyroxene and plagioclase [10], a signature t...

The Assessment in SpondyloArthritis international Society (ASAS) defined new criteria in 2009 for the classification of axial spondyloarthritis (SpA) in patients with ≥ 3 months of back pain who were aged <45 years at the onset of back pain. This represents a culmination of a number of efforts in the last 30 years starting with the 1984 modified New York criteria for ankylosing spondylitis, fol...

Background. Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is one of the most common pathogens that cause hospital- and community-acquired infections in the world. The use of molecular typing methods is essential for determining the origin of the strains, their clonal relations, and also in epidemiological investigations. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of antibiotic resistant S. a...

OBJECTIVES To describe the prevalence of extra-articular disease (uveitis, psoriasis and inflammatory bowel disease [IBD]), in a cohort of patients with spondyloarthritis (SpA). PATIENTS AND METHODS AQUILES is an observational, prospective and multicentric study of three cohorts of patients with one of the following immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMID): SpA, psoriasis, or IBD. In the ...

Few reports from Africa suggest that resistance pattern, virulence factors and genotypes differ between Staphylococcus aureus from nasal carriage and clinical infection. We therefore compared antimicrobial resistance, selected virulence factors and genotypes of S. aureus from nasal carriage and clinical infection in Southwest Nigeria. Non-duplicate S. aureus isolates were obtained from infectio...

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether expression of the four members of the neurotrophin (NT) family and their four corresponding receptors is related to synovial inflammation in patients with spondyloarthritis (SpA). MATERIAL AND METHODS Synovial fluid (SF) and serum NTs and their receptors were measured by ELISA. Immunohistochemistry was used for synovial tissue biopsy specimens from patients wi...