OBJECTIVE The 1987 American College of Rheumatology (ACR; formerly the American Rheumatism Association) classification criteria for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have been criticised for their lack of sensitivity in early disease. This work was undertaken to develop new classification criteria for RA. METHODS A joint working group from the ACR and the European League Against Rheumatism developed,...

Interstitial lung disease (ILD) is the most common extra-articular manifestations of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in the lung. This study aimed to identify clinical features of RA-associated ILD (RA-ILD). Patients with RA were retrospectively enrolled and sub-classified as RA-ILD or RA without ILD based on high-resolution computed tomography imaging. Pulmonary function testing parameters and level...

We asked whether key morphogenetic signaling pathways interact with 22q11 gene dosage to modulate the severity of cranial or cardiac anomalies in DiGeorge/22q1 deletion syndrome (22q11DS). Sonic hedgehog (Shh) and retinoic acid (RA) signaling is altered in the brain and heart-clinically significant 22q11DS phenotypic sites-in LgDel mouse embryos, an established 22q11DS model. LgDel embryos trea...

Very large eddy simulations of high-aspect-ratio unbounded Rayleigh-Bénard convection for Pr=0.71 over a 10-decade range of Rayleigh numbers (Ra=10(5)-10(15)) reveal a consolidation and dramatic thinning of the wall boundary layer with an increase in the Ra number. The fingerlike plumes between planform structures become also thinner, more distant, but much more vigorous. The Ra exponent in the...

background recently, assessment of the atrial motion and deformation indices obtained via doppler myocardial imaging (dmi) has been proposed as a new method of exploring the atrial function. objective our aim was to assess the right atrial (ra) regional function using myocardial velocities, strain, and strain rate imaging (sri) and compare it with the function of the inter-atrial septum (ias) a...

BACKGROUND Recent evidence supports the use of robotic surgery for the minimally invasive surgical management of adrenal masses. OBJECTIVE To describe a contemporary step-by-step technique of robotic adrenalectomy (RA), to provide tips and tricks to help ensure a safe and effective implementation of the procedure, and to compare its outcomes with those of laparoscopic adrenalectomy (LA). DE...

The binding of endogenous retinoids and stereoisomers of retinoic acid (RA) to the retinoid nuclear receptors, RA receptor (RARs) and retinoid X receptors (RXRs), was characterized using nucleosol preparations from transiently transfected COS-1 cells. Among several stereoisomers of RA tested, including 7-cis-, 9-cis-, 11-cis-, 13-cis-, and all-trans-RA, only 9-cis-RA effectively competes with 9...

The up-regulation of cellular retinoic acid binding protein-II (CRABP-II) has been invoked as an important mechanism of clinically acquired resistance to all-trans retinoic acid (RA) therapy in acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). To test this hypothesis, we used quantitative reverse transcription-PCR and fast performance liquid chromatography procedures to examine the levels of CRABP-II mRNA an...

At present, one of the most life threatening types of adult brain tumor is glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). The molecular mechanism underlying the progression of GBM remains to be fully elucidated. The modern method of clinical treatment has only improved the average survival rates of a newly diagnosed patients with GBM by ~15 months. Therefore, the discovery of novel molecules, which are involve...