British journal of rheumatology
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
The analgesic effect of acupuncture in chronic tennis elbow pain.
The immediate analgesic effect of a single non-segmental acupuncture stimulation treatment on chronic tennis elbow pain was studied in a placebo-controlled single-blind trial completed by 48 patients. Before and after treatment, all patients were examined physically by an unbiased independent examiner. Eleven-point box scales were used [13] for pain measurement. ⋯ After one treatment 19 out of 24 patients in the verum group (79.2%) reported pain relief of at least 50% (placebo group: six patients out of 24). The average duration of analgesia after one treatment was 20.2 h in the verum group (S = 21.54) and 1.4 h (S = 3.50) in the placebo group. The results are statistically significant (P < 0.01); they show that non-segmental verum acupuncture has an intrinsic analgesic effect in the clinical treatment of tennis elbow pain which exceeds that of placebo acupuncture.
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A group of four patients with RA were examined to test the hypothesis that there is a change in the endogenous opioid system in the brain during inflammatory pain. Regional cerebral opioid receptor binding was quantified using the opioid receptor antagonist [11C] diprenorphine and positron emission tomography (PET). ⋯ Significant region-specific increases over and above the more generalized changes were also seen in the frontal, cingulate and temporal cortices in addition to the straight gyrus. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that there are substantial increases in occupancy by endogenous opioid peptides during inflammatory pain.
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We investigated whether determination of serum transferrin receptor (TfR) is useful for detecting iron-deficiency in patients with chronic inflammatory diseases and for differentiating between iron-deficiency anaemia and anaemia of inflammation. Using an immunofluorometric assay, serum TfR was measured in 34 anaemic patients. Of these patients, 23 had a chronic rheumatic disease, 13 with both inflammation and iron-deficiency and 10 with anaemia of inflammation only; the other 11 patients had iron-deficiency anaemia and no evidence of inflammation. ⋯ M.) than in patients with iron-deficiency anaemia (6.7 +/- 1.1 mg/l, P < 0.01) or those with both inflammation and iron deficiency (5.8 +/- 1.0 mg/l, P < 0.01). Among patients with inflammatory disease, correlations between TfR and ferritin concentrations (r = -0.62, P < 0.05) and TfR and erythropoietin concentrations (r = 0.69, P < 0.001) were observed in iron-deficient subjects only. TfR, though not superior to serum ferritin, can help to distinguish between anaemia of inflammation and iron-deficiency anaemia and to identify iron-deficiency in subjects with chronic inflammation.