Predictive factors of effective tibial nerve release in tarsal tunnel syndrome.

Background: Factors that may affect surgical decompression results in tarsal tunnel syndrome are not known.

Methods: A retrospective single-center study included patients who had undergone surgical tibial nerve release. The effectiveness of decompression was evaluated according to whether the patient would or would not be willing to undergo another surgical procedure in similar preoperative circumstances.

A bicentre retrospective study of features and outcomes of patients with reactive arthritis.

Objective: Reactive arthritis (ReA) is a sterile arthritis following an extra-articular infection, usually of the gastrointestinal or genitourinary tract. The aim of this study was to assess the incidence and the clinical and therapeutic characteristics of ReA and to compare them with those of a historical cohort. We hypothesised that improved hygiene together with prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections may have decreased the incidence of ReA.

Fibromyalgia in Spondyloarthritis: Effect on Disease Activity Assessment in Clinical Practice.

Objective: Spondyloarthritis (SpA) is the second most frequent inflammatory rheumatic disease, characterized by spinal involvement, peripheral arthritis, or enthesitis with marked pain, stiffness, and fatigue. Fibromyalgia (FM) may be associated with SpA, and shares some common symptoms. We aimed to determine how FM influences assessment of SpA disease activity, which is mainly dependent on patient-based outcome measures such as the Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI) or the Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Score (ASDAS).

Rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia: a frequent unrelated association complicating disease management.

Objective: To assess the value of the 28-joint Disease Activity Score (DAS28) in evaluating disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) associated with fibromyalgia (FM). In this situation, because of the weight of the subjective measures included in the DAS28 equation, the patient's status may be overestimated, leading to inappropriate treatment. We analyze the relationship between RA and FM and discuss whether the association is random or a marker of poor prognosis.

[Rheumatoid arthritis: a general disease and local diseases].

The rheumatoid synovitis affects the joints by destroying the cartilage, the sub-chondral bone and the articular capsule. The tendons and ligaments can be degraded by proximity or by the means of the affected synovial sheaths. This conjunction of effects involves a foreseeable degradation on the complex articulations whose clinician must know the stages to interfere effectively into a preventive way by local interventions when the general treatments of the disease are insufficient and before recourse to the repairing surgery.

Infliximab therapy in rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis-induced specific antinuclear and antiphospholipid autoantibodies without autoimmune clinical manifestations: a two-year prospective study.

Treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) with infliximab (Remicade) has been associated with the induction of antinuclear autoantibodies (ANA) and anti-double-stranded DNA (anti-dsDNA) autoantibodies. In the present study we investigated the humoral immune response induced by infliximab against organ-specific or non-organ-specific antigens not only in RA patients but also in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) during a two-year followup. The association between the presence of autoantibodies and clinical manifestations was then examined.