Joint, bone, spine : revue du rhumatisme
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Multicenter Study
Smoking habits influence pain and functional and psychiatric features in fibromyalgia.
Numerous epidemiologic data have shown that smoking may play a role in the disease manifestations or severity of chronic musculoskeletal pain. The authors of the present study investigated the effect of smoking on clinical features such as pain, fatigue, functional impairment, and psychiatric features in the Korean population with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS). ⋯ This study revealed that smoking habits may, in part, influence pain or functional and psychiatric features in FMS patients. The impact of smoking on clinical features in FMS should be assessed in a larger study population.
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Gout results from elevated urate concentrations in the blood (hyperuricaemia). When super-saturation of urate is reached, monosodium urate crystals form within the joint. In some individuals, these crystals elicit a painful self-limiting inflammatory response that is characteristic of acute gouty arthritis. ⋯ Genome-wide association scans for genes regulating serum urate concentrations have identified two major regulators of hyperuricaemia- the renal urate transporters SLC2A9 and ABCG2. The risk variants at each gene approximately double the risk for gout in people of Caucasian ancestry, with SLC2A9 also resulting in higher risk for gout in people of Polynesian ancestry, a diverse population characterized by a high prevalence of gout. Ongoing genetic association studies are identifying and confirming other genes controlling serum urate concentrations; although genome-wide association studies in gout per se await recruitment of suitable case sample sets.
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Comparative Study
Nailfold capillaroscopic findings in systemic sclerosis related lung fibrosis and in idiopathic lung fibrosis.
Interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) are heterogeneous pathological conditions, which can be idiopathic or associated to other diseases, such as connective tissue diseases (CTD), especially systemic sclersosis (SSc). Both in primary and secondary forms of ILDs, fibroblastic and vascular anomalies are involved in the progressive structural destruction of lung parenchyma. Nailfold video-capillaroscopy (NFC) is a non-invasive diagnostic tool that permits detection of the main local microvascular alterations in SSc, which are an expression of the systemic vascular changes characteristic of this disease. The aim of this study is to record the range of capillaroscopic anomalies in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and to detect the main differences compared to patients with pulmonary fibrosis associated to SSc (SSc-PF). ⋯ An altered nailfold capillaroscopic pattern in IPF, as observed in this study, seems to support the hypothesis that a systemic vascular dysfunction in these patients plays a role in the pathogenesis of the disease.