Predictors of short-term LAMA ineffectiveness in treatment naïve patients with moderate to severe COPD.

Background: No specific (only subgroup) recommendations for the use of long-acting muscarinic antagonists in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exist. The aim of this exploratory hypothesis generating study was to assess whether different phenotypic/endotypic characteristics could be determinants of the short-term ineffectiveness of the initial tiotropium bromide monotherapy in treatment naïve moderate to severe COPD patients.

Methods: A total of 51 consecutively recruited COPD patients were followed for 3 months after the initial evaluation and prescribed initial treatment (tiotropium).

Clinical course and outcome predictors in pauci-immune ANCA-positive renal-limited vasculitis.

Our aim was to assess the clinical course and outcome of ANCA-positive, pauci-immune renal limited vasculitis, their correlation with laboratory and histopathologic parameters recorded at initial and follow up testing, and to identify the possible outcome predictors. The study included 17 patients with renal biopsy, clinical, serologic and histopathologic parameters meeting the criteria for pauci-immune ANCA-positive glomerulonephritis without extrarenal manifestations of the disease. Creatinine clearance, 24-hour proteinuria and ANCA titer by ELISA method were determined at disease onset, during treatment and at the end of follow up.

Newer antipsychotics and glucose metabolism: a comparison between olanzapine and risperidone.

In order to estimate the degree of glucose tolerance impairment, oral glucose tolerance test was conducted in the group of 15 schizophrenic patients taking olanzapine, the group of 15 schizophrenic patients taking risperidone and in the group of 14 healthy volunteers. In the olanzapine group the tolerance was impaired in 33% of the patients, contrary to the risperidone group in which impairment amounted to 20% of the patients. The authors discuss possible mechanisms responsible for impaired glucose tolerance in patients taking newer antipsychotic drugs.