OBJECTIVE To evaluate antibodies against cyclic citrullinated peptide (anti-CCP antibodies) for their predictive value for severe joint destruction in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and to examine their relationship to shared epitope (SE)-positive DRB1 alleles. METHODS Concentrations of anti-CCP antibodies were determined in sera from 126 patients with recent onset RA who had been followed prospec...

OBJECTIVE Delay of disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARD) therapy is a major contributing factor for poor outcome in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Although early therapy has been shown to be particularly effective, there is still uncertainty about the optimal time point of DMARD introduction. We wanted to test if a therapeutic window of opportunity may exist within the first few months of t...

BACKGROUND Recent climate-induced ice-shelf disintegration in the Larsen A (1995) and B (2002) areas along the Eastern Antarctic Peninsula formed a unique opportunity to assess sub-ice-shelf benthic community structure and led to the discovery of unexplored habitats, including a low-activity methane seep beneath the former Larsen B ice shelf. Since both limited particle sedimentation under prev...

OBJECTIVES To study the outcome in clinical practice of first DMARD and/or corticosteroid (CS) treatment in patients with recent onset rheumatoid arthritis (RA). PATIENTS 245 patients with active RA, not previously treated with DMARDs or CS, were randomised to one of two treatment groups, T1 = 7.5-15 mg of prednisolone (PRE) daily for one to three months followed, if needed, by methotrexate (...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the long-term frequency of disease remissions and the progression of joint damage in patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who were initially randomized to 2 years of treatment with either a combination of 3 disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) or a single DMARD. METHODS In this multicenter prospective followup study, a cohort of 195 patients with early...

Dense suspensions can exhibit a dramatic stressinduced transition from liquid-like to solid-like behavior. In many materials, the solid-like flow state is characterized by large flow fluctuations and instabilities. Although various experiments have been performed to characterize flow fluctuations, the mechanisms that govern the flow instabilities remain poorly understood. To elucidate these mec...

Corresponding Author: Jan Henrik Ardenkjær-Larsen, PhD Department of Electrical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Copenhagen, Denmark; E-mail: [email protected]

OBJECTIVE Periarticular osteopenia is an early radiological sign of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Quantitative ultrasound (QUS) devices have recently been shown to be useful for assessing osteoporosis. In this study the capability of a transportable and easy to use QUS device to detect skeletal impairment of the finger phalanges in patients with RA was investigated. METHODS In a cross sectional ...

INTRODUCTION The early aggressive management of the acute coagulopathy of trauma may improve survival in the trauma population. However, the timely identification of lethal exsanguination remains challenging. This study validated six scoring systems and algorithms to stratify patients for the risk of massive transfusion (MT) at a very early stage after trauma on one single dataset of severely i...