Publications by authors named "Armin Maier"

Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to explore gender differences in the phenotypical expression of Behçet's disease (BD) using data from the International AIDA Network Registry, focusing on damage index, disease manifestations, and cardiovascular risk.
  • A total of 1024 patients (567 males and 457 females) were examined, revealing that males had a significantly higher overall damage index and more frequent occurrences of uveitis and vascular involvement, while females showed higher instances of arthralgia, arthritis, and CNS involvement.
  • Key factors associated with major organ involvement included male gender, treatment with biologic agents, origin from endemic regions, and longer disease duration, indicating a more severe course of BD in males compared to females.
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Purpose: The clinical relevance of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) subtypes such as HLA-B51 on Behçet's disease (BD)-related uveitis and non-infectious uveitis (NIU) unrelated to BD remains largely unknown.

Methods: Data were prospectively collected from the International AIDA Network Registry for BD and for NIU. We assessed differences between groups (NIU unrelated to BD and positive for HLA-B51, BD-related uveitis positive for HLA-B51 and BD-related uveitis negative for HLA-B51) in terms of long-term ocular complications, visual acuity (VA) measured by best corrected visual acuity (BCVA), anatomical pattern, occurrence of retinal vasculitis (RV) and macular edema over time.

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  • This study evaluated the effectiveness of a systemic score in predicting severe outcomes in patients with Still disease, including the risk of mortality and severe complications like macrophage activation syndrome.
  • Involving 597 patients, the study found that a higher systemic score significantly correlated with life-threatening outcomes, with scores of 7 or above indicating a greater risk.
  • Key components that were most predictive of severe outcomes included liver and lung involvement, emphasizing the importance of these factors in managing Still disease.
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Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the clinical manifestations and outcome of COVID-19 in patients with inflammatory rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease (iRMD) as compared with the general population.

Methods: This is a case-control study of patients selected from the South Tyrol public health service, Italy, with and without iRMD, affected by COVID-19. We included patients ≥18 years and with a positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR test between 1 October 2020 and 1 March 2021.

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Article Synopsis
  • - This study investigates whether pediatric-onset, adult-onset, and elderly-onset Still's disease are the same condition or different diseases by comparing demographic, clinical, and treatment response data across these age groups.
  • - Out of 411 patients surveyed, most were adults (76.4%), while 15.8% were pediatric and 7.8% were elderly, with significant differences found in symptoms like skin rash and arthritis being more prevalent in children, and pleuritis in the elderly.
  • - Overall, while some minor differences in symptoms and lab results were noted among the age groups, the study concludes that Still's disease has similar demographic and treatment characteristics across pediatric, adult, and elderly patients.
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Background: Different patient clusters were preliminarily suggested to dissect the clinical heterogeneity in Still's disease. Thus, we aimed at deriving and validating disease clusters in a multicentre, observational, prospective study to stratify these patients.

Methods: Patients included in GIRRCS AOSD-study group and AIDA Network Still Disease Registry were assessed if variables for cluster analysis were available (age, systemic score, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C reactive protein (CRP) and ferritin).

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Article Synopsis
  • The study focuses on patients with Still's disease to identify clinical and laboratory signs associated with macrophage activation syndrome (MAS), a serious complication.
  • Out of 414 patients examined, 39 (9.4%) developed MAS, with several significant variables like liver involvement and high ferritin levels linked to its occurrence.
  • Multivariate analysis revealed that having hepatomegaly and monoarthritis were directly associated with MAS, while factors like a normal platelet count were protective against its development.
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  • A study assessed the clinical characteristics and treatment effectiveness of methotrexate (MTX) in patients with Still's disease, focusing on changes in disease activity and inflammatory markers.
  • Among the 171 patients studied, MTX was commonly used with glucocorticoids (GCs), and many showed significant improvement, with 38.6% achieving clinical remission and reduced inflammation.
  • The results suggest that MTX is effective in managing Still's disease symptoms, reducing the need for GCs, though some patients discontinued MTX due to side effects or lack of efficacy.
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Introduction: This paper describes the creation and preliminary results of a patient-driven registry for the collection of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) and patient-reported experiences (PREs) in Behçet's disease (BD).

Methods: The project was coordinated by the University of Siena and the Italian patient advocacy organization SIMBA (Associazione Italiana Sindrome e Malattia di Behçet), in the context of the AIDA (AutoInflammatory Diseases Alliance) Network programme. Quality of life, fatigue, socioeconomic impact of the disease and therapeutic adherence were selected as core domains to include in the registry.

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Background/objectives: Long-term efficacy and safety of tocilizumab (TCZ) in adult-onset Still's disease (AOSD) mostly derive from small case series. Herein we report a registry-based study investigating TCZ efficacy and safety in a cohort of patients with AOSD evaluated by clinical and serum inflammatory markers as well as drug retention rate analysis.

Methods: This is an international multicentre study analyzing data from patients with AOSD regularly enrolled in the AIDA registry.

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Objective: The aim of this paper is to present the AutoInflammatory Disease Alliance (AIDA) international Registry dedicated to Vacuoles, E1 enzyme, X-linked, Autoinflammatory, Somatic (VEXAS) syndrome, describing its design, construction, and modalities of dissemination.

Methods: This Registry is a clinical, physician-driven, population- and electronic-based instrument designed for the retrospective and prospective collection of real-life data. Data gathering is based on the Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) tool and is intended to obtain real-world evidence for daily patients' management.

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Purpose of the present paper is to point out the design, development and deployment of the AutoInflammatory Disease Alliance (AIDA) International Registry dedicated to pediatric and adult patients with Behçet's disease (BD). The Registry is a clinical physician-driven non-population- and electronic-based instrument implemented for the retrospective and prospective collection of real-life data about demographics, clinical, therapeutic, laboratory, instrumental and socioeconomic information from BD patients; the Registry is based on the Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) tool, which is thought to collect standardised information for clinical real-life research, and has been realised to change over time according to future scientific acquisitions and potentially communicate with other existing and future Registries dedicated to BD. Starting from January 31st, 2021, to February 7th, 2022, 110 centres from 23 countries in 4 continents have been involved.

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Objective: Aim of this paper is to present the design, construction, and modalities of dissemination of the AutoInflammatory Disease Alliance (AIDA) International Registry for patients with systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (sJIA) and adult-onset Still's disease (AOSD), which are the pediatric and adult forms of the same autoinflammatory disorder.

Methods: This Registry is a clinical, physician-driven, population- and electronic-based instrument implemented for the retrospective and prospective collection of real-world data. The collection of data is based on the Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) tool and is intended to obtain evidence drawn from routine patients' management.

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The concern about the offspring's health is one of the reasons for a reduced family size of women with rheumatic diseases (RD). Increased risk of autoimmune diseases (AD) and neurodevelopmental disorders (ND) has been reported in children born to patients with RD. Within a nationwide survey about reproductive issues of women with RD, we aimed at exploring the long-term outcome of their children.

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Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of ferric carboxymaltose in rheumatic patients with iron deficiency anaemia.

Materials And Methods: The study retrospectively evaluated a cohort of 34 patients with iron deficiency anaemia affected by inflammatory rheumatic diseases that are refractory or intolerant to oral iron therapy. They were treated with ferric carboxymaltose for a total of 56 cycles of treatment.

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Only a few studies have reported long-term efficacy of interleukin (IL)-1 inhibition in systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (sJIA) and adult-onset Still disease (AOSD). Herein we report on the effectiveness of anakinra (ANA), expressed in terms of drug retention rate (DRR), and evaluate the predictive factors of drug survival in a cohort of patients with sJIA and AOSD. This is a multicenter study reviewing retrospectively the medical records from 61 patients with sJIA and 76 with AOSD, all treated with ANA in 25 Italian tertiary referral centers.

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Article Synopsis
  • * A survey was conducted with 477 women aged 18-55, revealing that many desire larger families than they feel able to have due to health concerns.
  • * Improved physician-patient communication is essential, as those who received counseling had better knowledge about their reproductive options, highlighting significant unmet needs.
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Systemic treatment is necessary for one third of patients with renal cell carcinoma. No valid biomarker is currently available to tailor personalized therapy. In this study we established a representative panel of patient derived xenograft (PDX) mouse models from patients with renal cell carcinomas and determined serum levels of high mobility group B1 (HMGB1) protein under treatment with sunitinib, pazopanib, sorafenib, axitinib, temsirolimus and bevacizumab.

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A few studies have reported the safety profile of interleukin (IL)-1 blockers from real life. The aim of this study is to describe anakinra (ANA) and canakinumab (CAN) safety profile in children and adults, based on data from a real-life setting. Demographic, clinical, and therapeutic data from patients treated with ANA and CAN were retrospectively collected and analyzed.

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Interleukin (IL)-1 inhibitors have been suggested as possible therapeutic options in a large number of old and new clinical entities characterized by an IL-1 driven pathogenesis. To perform a nationwide snapshot of the on-label and off-label use of anakinra (ANA) and canakinumab (CAN) for different conditions both in children and adults. We retrospectively collected demographic, clinical, and therapeutic data from both adult and pediatric patients treated with IL-1 inhibitors from January 2008 to July 2016.

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In rheumatoid arthritis (RA), treatment response is generally assessed using standard clinical disease activity measures. However, ultrasound has become increasingly popular among rheumatologists to monitor disease activity and response. The purpose of this analysis of ECOgraphic evaluation for STaging ARthritis (ECOSTAR) study data was to determine how ultrasound affects clinicians' decisions about changing treatment in RA.

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Caryolanes are known as typical plant-derived sesquiterpenes. Here we describe the isolation and full structure elucidation of three caryolanes, bacaryolane A-C (1-3), that are produced by a bacterial endophyte (Streptomyces sp. JMRC:ST027706) of the mangrove plant Bruguiera gymnorrhiza.

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Purpose: The transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) signaling pathway is known to play a critical role in promoting tumor growth. Consequently, blocking this pathway has been found to inhibit tumor growth. In order to achieve an optimal anti-tumor effect, however, it remains to be established whether blocking the TGF-β signaling pathway alone is sufficient, or whether the tumor microenvironment plays an additional, possibly synergistic, role.

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