Objective: Pemphigus is a rare autoimmune disease that may be fatal without proper medical intervention. It is a blistering disease that involves both the skin and mucus membranes, in which the most important causes of death comprise superimposed opportunistic infections and complications of long-term high-dose corticosteroid therapy or prolonged consumption of immune suppressant drugs. Skin le...

The present manuscript describes simple, sensitive, rapid, accurate, precise and economical spectrophotometric method for the simultaneous determination of prednisolone acetate and ofloxacin in combined eye drop dosage form. The method is based on the simultaneous equations method for analysis of both the drugs using methanol as solvent. Prednisolone acetate has absorbance maxima at 243 nm and ...

Objective. To study the predictive factors for avascular necrosis (AVN) of bone in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Method. The records of 38 SLE patients who developed clinically apparent AVN during the course of their disease were reviewed. Information on clinical presentation, corticosteroid usage and autoantibody profiles was obtained, and comparison was made between these ...

OBJECTIVE To assess the efficacy of a multidrug protocol in recurrent acute pericarditis. We tried also to assess the specific role of colchicine. METHODS We studied 58 patients (34 males) in the largest monocentric observational study. All patients received prolonged courses of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs; generally we do not start a corticosteroid in recurrent acute pericarditis, ...

BACKGROUND Acute stroke patients suffering from aspiration may present with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). There is still a lack of convincing data about the efficacy of corticosteroids in the treatment of aspiration-related ARDS. Therefore, we evaluated the clinical impact of corticosteroids on aspiration-related ARDS. METHODS Between 2012 and 2014, we conducted a retrospective ...

BACKGROUND The 180-kDa transmembrane hemidesmosomal protein (BPAG2) has been identified as an important autoantigen in bullous pemphigoid (BP). Using the NC16A domain as the antigenic target, a highly sensitive and specific enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for the detection of autoantibodies to BP180 was developed. AIM To investigate the correlation of clinical severity and ELISA ind...

BACKGROUND Anakinra is the first interleukin-1 inhibitor to be used in clinical practice, and recent evidence showed that interleukin-1 plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of adult-onset Still disease (AoSD). However, data concerning efficacy with anakinra use in different clinical trials has not been evaluated, and the overall remission of AoSD with anakinra treatment has not been well de...

Interstitial pneumonitis is a classical complication of many drugs. Pulmonary toxicity due to 5-azacytidine, a deoxyribonucleic acid methyltransferase inhibitor and cytotoxic drug, has rarely been reported. We report a 67-year-old female myelodysplastic syndrome patient treated with 5-azacytidine at the conventional dosage of 75 mg/m2 for 7 days. One week after starting she developed moderate f...

BACKGROUND Data regarding the treatment efficacy of integrative treatment of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western Medicine (WM) in treating patients with (SARS) are conflicting. The effects of integrative TCM/WM treatment have not been fully quantified. OBJECTIVES To systematically asses the treatment effects of integrated TCM with WM versus WM alone in patients with SARS, incorpora...