Introduction: The antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is widely used to treat various rheumatic diseases. Many autoimmune diseases occur in women of child-bearing age who may become pregnant while on therapy, which raises concerns regarding the teratogenicity of HCQ and its effect on the outcome of the pregnancy. There is a lack of data regarding the safety of HCQ during pregnancy.
Areas Covered: In this review, the authors attempt to identify relevant publications by searching MEDLINE, Cochrane database, Ovid-Currents Clinical Medicine, Ovid-Embase:Drugs and Pharmacology, EBSCO, Web of Science and SCOPUS using the search terms HCQ and/or pregnancy. A basis for the mechanism of action of HCQ is provided.
Expert Opinion: HCQ has been shown by numerous studies over the past 15 years to be efficacious in the treatment of autoimmune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus, discoid lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis. HCQ does not appear to be associated with any increased risk of congenital defects, spontaneous abortions, fetal death, prematurity or decreased numbers of live births in patients with autoimmune diseases. Therefore, in the author's opinion, HCQ is safe for the treatment of autoimmune diseases during pregnancy.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1517/14740338.2011.566555 | DOI Listing |
Cancer
January 2025
Fox Chase Cancer Center, Temple University Health System, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Background: Little is known about the role that charitable copay assistance (CPA) plays in addressing access to care and financial distress. The study sought to evaluate financial distress and experience with CPA among patients with cancer and autoimmune disease.
Methods: This is a national cross-sectional self-administered anonymous electronic survey conducted among recipients of CPA to cover the costs of a drug for cancer or autoimmune disease.
J Neurol
January 2025
Department of Neurology, Clinic of Optic Neuritis and Danish Multiple Sclerosis Center, Rigshospitalet-Glostrup, Valdemar Hansens Vej 13, 2600, Glostrup, Denmark.
Background: Although optic neuritis (ON) is common in multiple sclerosis (MS), lesions of the optic nerve are not included as an anatomical substrate for dissemination in space and time (DIS and DIT).
Objective: To assess the increase in sensitivity of including MRI lesions of the optic nerve for the diagnosis of MS in patients with ON.
Methods: We included patients consecutively referred with first time, monosymptomatic ON, with no known cause of the ON, who underwent orbital MRI including fat suppressed T2 and T1-sequences with and without gadolinium contrast.
Eur Radiol Exp
January 2025
St Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.
Background: The large language model ChatGPT can now accept image input with the GPT4-vision (GPT4V) version. We aimed to compare the performance of GPT4V to pretrained U-Net and vision transformer (ViT) models for the identification of the progression of multiple sclerosis (MS) on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Methods: Paired coregistered MR images with and without progression were provided as input to ChatGPT4V in a zero-shot experiment to identify radiologic progression.
J Neurol
January 2025
NMR Research Unit, Queen Square MS Centre, Department of Neuroinflammation, Faculty of Brain Sciences, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, Queen Square, London, WC1N 3BG, UK.
Cognitive impairment (CI) in multiple sclerosis (MS) is only partially explained by whole-brain volume measures, but independent component analysis (ICA) can extract regional patterns of damage in grey matter (GM) or white matter (WM) that have proven more closely associated with CI. Pathology in GM and WM occurs in parallel, and so patterns can span both. This study assessed whether joint-ICA of GM and WM features better explained cognitive function compared to single-tissue ICA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Neurol
January 2025
Jacobs Comprehensive MS Treatment and Research Center, Department of Neurology, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA.
Background: Previous investigations on optical coherence tomography (OCT) in multiple sclerosis (MS) focused on generalizable macular and peri-papillary regions without considering the anatomic variations of the retinal layer thickness.
Objective: This study aimed to assess the utility of parafoveal retinal layer thickness measured by OCT, underscoring its relationships with clinical outcomes in MS.
Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 214 people with MS (pwMS) and 57 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs) were enrolled.
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