Active clinical trials for "Arteritis"

To date, there is no available tool that allows, at individual level, determination of the probability to develop clinically relevant complications of prolonged glucocorticoid therapy. In patients with inflammatory rheumatic disorders requiring prolonged glucocorticoid therapy, such tool could be useful to adapt first-line treatment decisions (in daily practice and in future clinical trials). The main objective of the study is to identify routine clinical, biological and DXA baseline characteristics predictive of the occurrence of clinically relevant complications of glucocorticoid therapy at 1 year, in order to propose a predictive score.

To facilitate clinical, basic science, and translational research projects involving the study of rheumatic diseases.

The purpose of this study is to collect existing tissue specimens from subjects enrolled in Vasculitis Clinical Research Consortium (VCRC) studies. Analysis of these tissue specimens and linked clinical data collected through VCRC studies may lead to the identification and development of a series of translational research projects. Results of these studies will provide vasculitis researchers with insight into the causes of these diseases and generate new ideas for diagnostic tests and therapies, and will be of great interest to the larger communities of researchers investigating vasculitis and other autoimmune, inflammatory, and vascular diseases.

Takayasu arteritis is a chronic vasculitis mainly involving the aorta and its main branches such as the brachiocephalic, carotid, subclavian, vertebral, and renal arteries, as well as the coronary and pulmonary arteries. Inflammation causes segments of the vessels to become narrowed, blocked, or even stretched, possibly resulting in aneurysms. The disease is very rare but most commonly occurs in young Asian women. However, there is a considerable lack of understanding of the disease mechanism of Takayasu arteritis. Initially, the disease remains clinically silent (or remains undetected) until the patients present with vascular occlusion. Additionally, many individuals with Takayasu arteritis, however, have no apparent symptoms despite disease activity. Therefore, biomarkers for diagnosis and monitor disease activity in individuals with Takayasu arteritis are needed. In this study, the investigators therefore to use different methods to identify new biomarkers for diagnosing or monitoring the disease activity in individuals with Takayasu arteritis. These biomarkers may provide valuable insights into the underlying biochemical processes and aid the understanding of the pathophysiology of this disease.

To demonstrate that microparticles (MPs), having a powerful procoagulant potential, are in larger amounts in the blood of patients with histologically proven giant cell arteritis (GCA), compared with patients matched for age, sex and with or without inflammatory syndrome.

Giant cell arteritis - Optimization of diagnostics

Longitudinal imaging in patients with large vessel vasculitis to predict further disease course

Giant cell arteritis (GCA) causes inflammation of the arteries and can lead to serious complications such as blindness, necessitating rapid diagnosis and treatment. Although older technology non-digital PET/CT scans are routinely used for the diagnosis of GCA in large arteries, they have not been able to reliably detect inflammation of the small arteries responsible for blindness. Recent technological advances have enabled PET/CT imaging of millimetric disease in the body, and Quebec has been one of the first to deploy these new digital PET/CT scanners, which are now able to resolve small arteries. In the proposed research study, patients who are suspected by their doctors to have GCA will undergo temporal artery biopsy (the standard of care), an ultrasound of the temporal arteries, and digital PET/CT scan after injection of radioactive glucose. Digital PET/CT scans will be interpreted for the presence of abnormal uptake in the large and small arteries, as well as for the presence of other causes of the patient's symptoms. The diagnostic accuracy of PET/CT and ultrasound will be evaluated with respect to an expert panel diagnosis of giant cell arteritis and compared. Results will be adjusted for lack of a perfect reference test using advanced statistics. The goal will be to see if digital PET/CT can become a single, integrated test to diagnose this disease.

The design of this study is generally divided into two parts: First, establish an isolated coronary arteritis cohort. Then, through the case-control study, the clinical characteristics of patients with isolated coronary arteritis and patients with coronary artery disease are compared and the preliminary screening criteria for patients are constructed. Then, through mass spectrometry flow cytometry and cytokine detection, the biomarkers related to immune inflammation related to the occurrence of coronary artery disease are discussed to provide clues for further exploring the pathogenesis; Subsequently, a prospective cohort study was conducted to compare the clinical characteristics and biomarkers of patients with or without adverse cardiovascular events by following up patients with coronary inflammation, and to explore the prognostic factors of patients with coronary inflammation.

Giant cell arteritis (GCA) is a type of large vessel granulomatous vasculitis responsible for the inflammation of the aorta and the branches of the external carotid, notably temporal arteries. The diagnosis of GCA relies upon the identification of vasculitis following histopathological analysis of temporal artery biopsy (TAB) showing mononuclear cells infiltration, fragmentation of the internal elastic lamina as well as significant intimal hyperplasia. Apart from its lack of sensitivity, one of the weaknesses of TAB is the delay in obtaining the result due to the time required to prepare the sample for histological analysis. Pursuing the idea to improve TAB performances, our group recently demonstrated the use of full-field optical coherence tomography (FF-OCT) to visualize structural changes associated with the inflammatory processes of GCA. The present work suggests a further use of dynamic FF-OCT on TAB for a direct visualization of the mononuclear cells infiltration to ensure rapid on-site diagnosis of GCA.