Two hundred patients with rheumatoid arthritis were studied in a prospective open trial comparing treatment with sulphasalazine and auranofin in patients with active disease over 12 months. The two drugs improved many parameters of disease activity at 12, 24, and 48 weeks. At 12 weeks, the group treated with sulphasalazine had a lower platelet count (Mann-Whitney U test), erythrocyte sedimentat...

After myocardial infarction there is an acute deterioration of the flow properties of blood. The present study was designed to test whether the abnormality persists. Blood and plasma viscosity, red cell aggregation and deformability, haematocrit, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, white cell count, cholesterol, and triglycerides were measured in 51 patients who had had a myocardial infarction 5.4 ...

introduction: erythrocyte sedimentation rate (esr) remains as one of the most reliable tests in clinical practices. yet its use is time consuming and requires a large blood sample. the aim of this study was assessing a faster and reliable method of esr estimation. methods: an esr estimation method was described and performed on 108 patients using capillary tube (micro esr) and capillary periphe...

The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) test has been used for over a century. The Westergren method is routinely used in a variety of clinics. However, the mechanism of erythrocyte sedimentation remains unclear, and the 60 min required for the test seems excessive. We investigated the effects of cell aggregation during blood sedimentation and electrical conductivity at different hematocrits. ...

A serial erythrocyte sedimentation procedure is based on maintaining blood in vitro in thermal (body temperature) and flow equilibrium, as changes in sedimentation rate are evaluated at 20-mm intervals. Each measurement was made 1 h after the determination was begun. We thus confirmed in vitro the clinically observed effects of quinine on blood cell aggregation. A delayed effect of quinine on a...

The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) is still a widely used parameter for acute phase inflammation. Recently, new methods based on direct undiluted measurement of ESR in a standard EDTA tube have been developed. We evaluated the analytic performance of one of these new methods, the Ves-Matic Cube 200 (Diesse Diagnostica Senese, Siena, Italy), and compared it with several established Westerg...

In view of the results obtained by the determination of plasma viscosity by Harkness and others (1946) it seemed desirable to apply this method to the chronic rheumatic diseases, but owing to difficulties encountered in procuring the apparatus comparatively few tests had been made before the publication of similar trials by Cowan and Harkness (1947). In the latter paper erythrocyte sedimentatio...

OBJECTIVE The clinical effects of high dosage pulse glucocorticosteroid (GS) infusion as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) differ considerably between patients. The aim of the present study was to gain more insight into these differences in clinical response. METHODS Twenty-three RA patients (6 M/17 F) with treatment-resistant active erosive disease were treated with GS pulse therapy,...

The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and C reactive protein (CRP) were measured in 74 patients with polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR)/giant cell arteritis (GCA) on presentation, in the first month of treatment, and at long term follow up (up to 177 weeks). Before treatment the ESR was raised (greater than 30 mm/h) in all cases and the CRP was raised (greater than 6 mg/l) in 49/55 cases. The ESR ...