INTRODUCTION The aim of the present study was to investigate the association between cardiovascular risk factors and endothelial dysfunction in patients with mixed connective tissue disease (MCTD) and to determine which biomarkers are associated with atherosclerotic complications, such as cardiovascular disease. METHODS Fifty MCTD patients and 38 healthy age-matched and sex-matched controls w...

Modifications occurring on autoantigens during cell death have been proposed to have a role in the initiation of autoimmune diseases. Patients suffering from mixed connective tissue disease (MCTD) produce autoantibodies directed to U1 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein (snRNP), and antibodies against a 70 kDa protein component, the U1-70K (70K) protein, are the most prominent. During apoptosis, 70...

About half of the discourse relations annotated in Penn Discourse Treebank (Prasad et al., 2008) are not explicitly marked using a discourse connective. But we do not have extensive theories of when or why a discourse relation is marked explicitly or when the connective is omitted. Asr and Demberg (2012a) have suggested an information-theoretic perspective according to which discourse connectiv...

BACKGROUND Arterial tortuosity syndrome (ATS) is an uncommon connective tissue disorder of unknown aetiology. The most prominent feature is tortuosity of the large arteries, but lengthening, stenosis, and aneurysm formation are also frequent. METHODS We performed a genomewide screen by homozygosity mapping of three consanguineous multiplex families, two from Morocco, and one from Italy, which...

T he cause of systemic sclerosis (SSc) is still unknown. In the last decade several key events in the pathogenesis have been suggested,’ including the endothelial injury, the fibroblast activation, and the peculiar immunologic involvement.’ The disease starts in the microvascular system, spreading to the connective tissue. * The process involves endothelial cells (EC), lymphocytes, and fibrobla...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to investigate if co-morbid conditions as hepatitis C virus infection and celiac disease may be associated to undifferentiated connective tissue disease. METHODS We studied retrospectively and prospectively 52 patients with diagnosis of undifferentiated connective tissue disease, subdivided, according to Vaz criteria, in systemic lupus erythematosus, syste...

BACKGROUND Identification of cell types in bovine tissue sections is complicated by the limited availability of anti-bovine antibodies, and by antigen retrieval treatments required for formalin-fixed tissue samples. We have evaluated an antibody and lectin panel for identifying major cell types in paraffin-embedded bovine tissue sections, and report optimized pretreatments for these markers. ...

normal pressure hydrocephalus (nph) is characterized by gait apraxia, urinary incontinence, and dementia. mixed connective tissue disease (mctd) is an autoimmune connective tissue disease that has never been reported to cause nph. our patient was a 67-year man with a one-year history of gradual worsening gait and balance, urinary urgency with urge incontinence and decreased short-term memory. p...