Current Rheumatology Reviews - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2007

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a syndrome and not a disease. Six million people in the United States have FM and it costs society $14 billion annually in lost productivity. Since patients don't succumb and are rarely hospitalized for FM, its evolution into an entity with a distinct epidemiology, etiopathogenesis, clinical presentation, laboratory abnormalities and therapy has lagged behind other conditions. Further compounding t Read More

In human adults, new blood vessels may form in two ways: via endothelial sprouting from pre-existing endothelial cells/angioblasts (angiogenesis) or via the peripheral recruitment of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) (vasculogenesis). EPCs, which have been recently discovered, are a population of bone marrow-derived cells capable of differentiating into mature endothelial cells, and participating in the formation of ne Read More

Procalcitonin (PCT), the precursor of the hormone calcitonin, is a new parameter of inflammation. This acutephase hormokine seems to be more accurate for differentiating between bacterial infections and viral or non-infective causes of inflammation than other serological markers. PCT, which is induced in invasive bacterial infections, is routinely assayed in some intensive care, surgery, haematological units and emergen Read More

Clinical symptoms of chronic muscle conditions like fibromyalgia (FM), include pain, stiffness, subjective weakness, and muscle fatigue. Pain in FM is usually described as fluctuating and always associated with local or generalized tenderness (hyperalgesia and/or allodynia). This tenderness related to FM pain depends on increased peripheral and/or central nervous system responsiveness to peripheral stimuli which can be either noxi Read More

Although patellofemoral osteoarthritis is common and a frequent cause of disability, its aetiology remains unknown. Biomechanical factors are believed to be important in the pathogenesis of the disease. Although the patellofemoral joint bears little axial load during normal walking, retropatellar load increases during knee flexion and can exceed three times body-weight during deep knee bends. The combination of la Read More

Increasing evidence suggests that common musculoskeletal diseases such as osteoporosis (OP), osteoarthritis (OA), and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are increased in the presence of low vitamin D intake or low serum 25- hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) levels. In addition, individuals with OP, OA, and RA carry an increased risk for falls and fractures, while anti-fall and anti-fracture efficacy of vitamin D has been demonstrated in the ge Read More

Tendinopathy is of distinct interest in rheumatology as it describes a painful tendon disease with local tenderness, swelling and pain associated with sonographic features such as hypoechogenic texture and diameter enlargement. Recent research elucidated microcirculatory changes in tendinopathy using laser Doppler flowmetry. Tendon capillary blood flow is increased at the point of pain correlating to neovascularisatio Read More

Low level laser therapy (LLLT) is a promising tool for rheumatic diseases, and a systematic Cochrane review suggests that LLLT could be considered in rheumatoid arthritis management due to positive outcomes for pain and morning stiffness. The possible mechanisms behind LLLT are moving from myth to reality through an increasing number of controlled LLLT trials. A literature search revealed 82 laboratory trials and 11 rand Read More

The efficacy of periarticular corticosteroid treatment of the sacroiliac (SI) joint was investigated in patients with chronic low back pain in the region of the SI joint in two double-blind, controlled studies. Twenty consecutive patients with spondylarthropathy (SpA) entered one study and correspondingly the other involved 24 consecutive nonspondylarthropathic patients with chronic pain in the SI joint region. The patients i Read More

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an inflammatory autoimmune syndrome that may affect most organs in the body. Anti-dsDNA antibodies represent a classification criterion for SLE and are involved in lupus nephritis. Recently, the structures that bind lupus-related nephritogenic autoantibodies in vivo have been characterized by transmission electron microscopy (EM), immune-EM and co-localization immune-EM. Read More

Fibromyalgia syndrome is not a diagnosis in itself, but merely represents a set of classification criteria. It is possible to distinguish between different subgroups. Such a distinction can be made on the basis of psychopathological, clinical and laboratory tests. One subgroup reveals elevated level of different cytokines. The treatment of primary fibromyalgia can be optimized by taking these subgroups into consideration since one gro Read More