BACKGROUND Clinical and preclinical data demonstrate the analgesic actions of adenosine. Central administration of adenosine agonists, however, suppresses arousal and breathing by poorly understood mechanisms. This study tested the two-tailed hypothesis that adenosine A1 receptors in the pontine reticular formation (PRF) of C57BL/6J mice modulate breathing, behavioral arousal, and PRF acetylcho...

The aim of the present work is to compare drug survival and safety of infliximab, etanercept, and adalimumab (tumor necrosis factor [TNF] antagonists) in spondylarthritis (SpA) with those of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). To this purpose, we analysed the data in BIOBADASER (2000-2005), a drug registry launched in 2000 for long-term follow-up of the safety of these biologics in rheumatic diseases. T...

Molecular characterization of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) isolates in three different Arab world countries (West Bank of Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq) was the aim of the study presented here. This is done on the basis of spa sequencing and staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing. The majority (92%) of the spa-tested isolates belonged to spa type t932 and pos...

A 77-year-old woman who used her spa pool at least twice a day to relieve pain from osteoarthritis, developed progressive breathlessness, impaired pulmonary function, and radiographic changes consistent with hypersensitivity pneumonitis-like lung disease. M ycobacterium avium-intracellulare complex (MAC) was cultured from bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. Transbronchial biopsies revealed non-necrot...

OBJECTIVE The main objective of this study was to compare disease burden in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and axial spondyloarthritis (ax-SpA). METHODS In this cross-sectional study, all the RA (1093), PsA (365) and ax-SpA (333) patients who visited the out-patient clinic of the Hospital of Southern Norway Trust during the year 2013 were included; the RA patients all ha...

INTRODUCTION Diagnosis of axial spondyloarthritis (SpA) can be delayed for several years mainly because of low awareness of axial SpA among non-rheumatologists who are the first interlocutors of potential SpA patients. One strategy to decrease the delay between appearance of first symptoms and diagnosis of axial SpA and to allow early management of the disease is to provide the non-rheumatologi...

The seronegative spondyloarthropathies (SpAs) are associated both with clinical and subclinical colitis. Recently biological blockade with the tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNFalpha) antagonists infliximab and etanercept has been shown to be effective in the treatment of SpA. However, only infliximab is efficacious in the treatment of colitis in patients with Crohn's SpA. We report on two patie...

BACKGROUND Various virulence factors and superantigens are encoded by mobile genetic elements. The relationship between clonal background and virulence factors differs in different geographic regions. We compared the distribution and relationship of spa types and virulence genes among methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains isolated from a tertiary hospital in 2000-01 and 200...