1. The presence of fever and thyroid pain and tenderness, biochemical hyperthyroidism, and high ESR together make the diagnosis of subacute thyroiditis most likely.1,2 Subacute thyroiditis is also known as de Quervain’s thyroiditis and granulomatous thyroiditis. It is believed to be caused by viral infection. In this condition, despite the marked release of thyroid hormones from the damaged thy...

We read with interest the article entitled “Biomarkers as Potential Treatment Targets in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Systemic Review,” which brings forward evidence that serum and faecal biomarkers do not possess adequate operational characteristics to make them stand-alone treatment targets in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) but should be considered as important adjunctive measures to clini...

BACKGROUND Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a common respiratory disorder in children, which necessitates hospitalization. Bacterial pneumonia, especially lobar pneumonia and parapneumonic effusions, is associated with considerably severe clinical course and extensive alveolar infiltrates. Serum procalcitonin (PCT) level has been used to distinguish bacterial from viral infections, but its...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the leading causes of death for older people in US with rapidly increasing incidence. AD irreversibly and progressively damages the brain, but there are treatments in clinical trials to potentially slow the development of AD. We hypothesize that the presence of clinical traits, sharing common genetic variants with AD, could be used as a non-invasive means to p...

OBJECTIVE To examine the association of serum CRP and ESR with muscle strength in patients with knee OA. METHODS Cross-sectional data from 285 patients with knee OA from the Amsterdam Osteoarthritis (AMS-OA) cohort were analysed. CRP (mg/l) and ESR (mm/l) were measured in serum from patients' blood samples and the values were dichotomized for the analyses. Strength of quadriceps and hamstring...

AIM To investigate links between platelet parameters mean platelet volume (MPV), platelet count (PC), platelet distribution width (PDW), platelet mass (PM) and brucella tube agglutination titers (BSTAT) in patients with brucellosis. Initially, PC, MPV, PM and PDW calculations were compared between periods before and after treatment. The correlation between inflammation markers (erythrocyte sedi...

in order to find the correlation between the severity of carditis in acute rheumatic fever (arf) and the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (esr), c-reactive protein (crp) and anti-streptolysin o (aso) titers, we performed a retrospective study in shiraz on one-hundred and four patients. the mean age of the patients was 11 years. fever was seen in 85.5%, arthralgia in 95.2%, arthritis in 81.7%, car...

OBJECTIVE Spinal epidural abscess is a rare infectious disorder, often with a delayed diagnosis, and associated with significant morbidity and mortality rates. We conducted a retrospective study to define its clinical characteristics and to evaluate its prognostic factors. METHODS The medical charts of 46 patients (36 men and 10 women) with spinal epidural abscess over a 10-year period (from ...

The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and the serum acute-phase proteins (APP), C-reactive protein (CRP), fibrinogen, 9th component of complement (C9), and alpha, antitrypsin were measured on 231 occasions in 80 patients with ankylosing spondylitis and compared with those in 30 controls. APP levels did not correlate with clinical assessment of disease activity. However, there were significan...