Background: The natural history of ocular lesions in Behçet's disease is toward severe loss of vision/blindness in few years, whereas cytotoxic drugs have changed the outcome. Several open labeled cohort studies showed pulse cyclophosphamide (PCP) to be the best choice. Since one third of these patients are resistant to PCP it is important to know how much improvement one can expect from the r...

Aims: The objective of the present study was to investigate the parameters related to disease activity in patients with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS). Materials and methods: Fifty-three patients with AS who fulfilled the modified New York criteria were included in this study. The demographic data of the patients were recorded. Laboratory evaluation of the patients comprised erythrocyte sedimentat...

Objective The objective of this study was to investigate the association of clinical and renal disease activity with circulating sphingolipids in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. Methods We used liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry to measure the levels of 27 sphingolipids in plasma from 107 female systemic lupus erythematosus patients and 23 controls selected using a desig...

OBJECTIVE The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) serves as a unifying model for rehabilitation medicine. Variables of the health status measurements, the Crohn's Disease Activity Index and the Harvey-Bradshaw Index, have not been linked with the ICF categories and compared with other predictors of rehabilitation outcomes. METHODS Crohn's Disease Activity ...

Scintigraphy with autologous granulocytes labelled by technetium-99m hexamethyl, propylene amine oxime (99mTc-HMPAO) was performed in 103 Crohn's disease patients and 52 healthy controls. In 31 patients endoscopic and histologic activity was compared with scan activity index. In the 98 patients with a positive scan, the extent of Crohn's disease, assessed by scintigraphy, was compared with that...

OBJECTIVE : To analyse the disease course of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and ankylosing spondylitis (AS) during and after pregnancy by validated clinical instruments for measurement of disease activity, and assess their usefulness in pregnant patients. METHODS Included were 10 patients with RA and 9 with AS (10 pregnancies). Clinical examination and blood/urine sampling was perfor...