Within the last decade, musculoskeletal ultrasonography is playing an increasingly important role in the evaluation and monitoring of patients with chronic infl ammatory arthritis. High-resolution musculoskeletal ultrasonography allows direct assessment of intra-articular and periarticular infl ammatory activity and structural damage in infl ammatory arthritis. There have been a growing number ...

Glucocorticoids are the most effective therapy for the treatment of many chronic infl ammatory diseases such as asthma and infl ammatory bowel disease (Ito et al., 2006a). In contrast to the situation in asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a common and debilitating chronic infl ammatory disease of the lung, is glucocorticoid insensitive (Barnes, 2000a, b; Culpitt et al., 2003)...

Idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) are a heterogeneous group of disease with complex clinical features. The histological features of them usually include various degrees of degenerative changes and inflammatory (usually lymphocytic) infiltrates [1]. Histopathological evaluation is one of the key tools for the diagnosis of IIM. Because of the complexity of clinical, morphological and labor...

background: type 2 diabetes mellitus (t2dm) and periodontitis are infl ammatory conditions with a bidirectional association. this pilot study aimed to evaluate whether t2dm and glycemic control interfere in infl ammatory markers profi les in gingival crevicular fl uid (gcf) in periodontitis patients. materials and methods: fourteen diabetic periodontitis patients were enrolled in this study, se...

Th e allergic response is best characterized as a specifi c infl ammatory response of the immune system against environmental agents that contact the skin or mucosa. Th e primary immune cells involved in allergic responses are IgEreceptor positive mast cells (embedded within tissues) and basophils (circulating in the plasma).3 When an allergen crosslinks two or more IgE antibodies connected to ...

Sepsis is a clinical syndrome characterized by systemic infl ammation and widespread tissue injury. It results from an excessive infl ammatory host response to an infective agent which, when generalized, involves normal tissue not originally affected by the causative organism(s) [1]. There is massive release of infl ammatory mediators, causing leukocytes to accumulate in organs distant from the...

RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS IS AN AUTOIMMUNE disease that affects 1.3 million adults in the United States.1 Of these, about 75 percent are women. Disease onset generally occurs between 30 and 50 years of age. Disease hallmarks are synovial infl ammation, progressive bone erosion, joint mal-alignment and destruction, and subsequent weakness of surrounding tissues and muscles. Systemic manifestations al...

Chronic infl ammation has been identifi ed as an important risk factor in the development of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract cancers, and the underlying molecular mechanisms have been studied extensively. Chronic infl ammation is able to trigger cellular events to promote malignant transformation of normal epithelial cells in the GI tract to cancer. Host infl ammation responses in carcinogenesi...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and psoriatic arthritis (PsA) are all associated with a probably distinct immune-mediated pathogenesis that is central to the pathophysiology of each disease but ultimately leads to a chronic infl ammatory response as a fi nal common pathway. Th is fundamental infl ammatory response is characterised by an overproduction of pro infl ammatory...