A 72-year-old women with polymyalgia rheumatica clinically controlled on maintenance steroid therapy presented with symptoms of chest pain and numbness in the right arm. A diagnosis of dissecting aortic aneurysm was confirmed at thoracotomy and the aorta was successfully resected. Histology revealed active giant cell aortitis. We suggest that a normal erythrocyte sedimentation rate in patients ...

OBJECTIVE To describe primary care patterns of referral and diagnoses of patients with rheumatic diseases referred to rheumatologists. METHODS The medical records of all consecutive patients referred in 1994 by >300 primary care physicians to two rheumatologists at an academic centre were reviewed. The referring physician diagnosis was compared with the rheumatologist's diagnosis. Sensitivity...

OBJECTIVE To describe demographic features, disease manifestations and therapy in patients with giant cell arteritis from referral centers in Brazil. METHODS A retrospective cohort study was performed on 45 giant cell arteritis patients from three university hospitals in Brazil. Diagnoses were based on the American College of Rheumatology classification criteria for giant cell arteritis or te...

To cite: Shikino K, Ikusaka M, Shimada F. BMJ Case Rep Published online: [please include Day Month Year] doi:10.1136/bcr-2014206887 DESCRIPTION An 80-year-old woman presented with low-grade fever, weight loss and shoulder ache persistent over 6 months. She had developed headache with scalp allodynia, though these had improved spontaneously within 2 months. Physical examination revealed an absen...

Corticosteroids may mediate some of their anti-inflammatory effects via induction of a specific 38 kD protein, lipocortin-1. Autoantibodies to lipocortin-1 were measured by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in 90 healthy subjects and in 63 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), 36 with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), 26 with polymyalgia rheumatica, and 13 with chronic airways dise...

Background: To examine the frequency of possible giant cell arteritis (GCA) symptoms (including headache, temporal/scalp tenderness, jaw claudication and visual symptoms) in newly diagnosed polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) patients in UK primary care. Methods: The PMR Cohort Study is a primary care inception cohort of 652 adults with newly diagnosed polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR). At baseline, partic...