Noninfectious aortitis: Experience with tocilizumab in a regional hospital.

Objectives: Describe patients with noninfectious aortitis and their response to treatment in a regional hospital.

Methods: Review of patients with noninfectious aortitis, diagnostic technique used and immunosuppressive therapy received.

Results: We report 8 patients (7 women and one man) diagnosed with aortitis by positron emission tomography (PET).

High prevalence of subclinical atherosclerosis in psoriatic arthritis patients: a study based on carotid ultrasound.

Analyse the presence of subclinical atherosclerosis in psoriatic arthritis patients (PsA). A cross-sectional study of 53 patients with PsA and 53 controls matched for age and sex was designed. Carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) and the presence of carotid plaques (CP) were assessed with carotid ultrasound.

Cognitive impairment in patients with fibromyalgia syndrome as assessed by the mini-mental state examination.

Background: This study evaluated the frequency of cognitive impairment in patients with Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) using the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE).

Methods: We analyzed baseline data from all 46 patients with FMS and 92 age- and sex-matched controls per diagnosis of neuropathic (NeP) or mixed pain (MP) selected from a larger prospective study.

Results: FMS had a slight but statistically significant lower score in the adjusted MMSE score (26.

[Management of difficult clinical situations in rheumatoid arthritis: hepatitis].

Treatment of patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) who also present a chronic infection by the hepatitis B or C virus represents a therapeutic challenge due to the possibility that treatments used for RA can aggravate or reactivate hepatitis, either due to the drugs hepatic toxicity or the increase in viral replication after immunosuppresive treatment. The problem of reactivation of hepatitis has assumed a larger importance in the past 5 years with the publication of several cases of reactivation of hepatitis B associated with anti-TNF therapy. In this article we revise both problems, hepatotoxicity and the increase of viral replication, as well as the better strategies to treat these patients.