Active clinical trials for "Arthritis"

To measure the prevalence of Neuropathic pain in Rheumatoid arthritis patients with ankle and foot pain To evaluate the role of Neuromuscular Ultra sound (NMUS) and nerve conduction study (NCS) in assessment of Neuropathic foot and ankle in Rheumatoid arthritis patients

"Physical activity and diet in children and young people with arthritis" A qualitative study of exploring stake holder's experiences. Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) is the most common type of arthritis in children under the age of 16. The disease and its therapeutic management can cause serious long-term complications, which affect general activities and quality of life. The lack of specific guidelines for safe physical activity and appropriate management of any nutritional deficit aiming our study to find out your views and opinions about the needs of children and young people with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. We want to improve our knowledge about the impact of physical activity and eating habit on juvenile idiopathic arthritis and we want to develop a tool to help evaluate care. Few studies targeting quality of life and wellbeing in children adolescent populations have adopted the diet and physical activity perspective or approaches, consequently, this research project will help to address this gap through: Interview: to look at young people's current experiences with JIA as well as their parents/caregivers and health care professionals. Study findings will provide a snapshot of the current experiences of participants, helping to improve our knowledge about JIA, physical activity, and diet. Qualitative studies exploring people perspectives on their experiences, when collected systematically, adds valuable depth, insight and understanding into the issues related to JIA not possible through quantitative methodologies. This study uses a qualitative approach known as framework methodology to understand stakeholder's experience of what helps and what hinders improving the quality of life in children and young adult with JIA. 21-30 stakeholders will be recruited in Oxford UK, to take part in individual semi-structured guided interviews lasting approximately one hour. Participant responses will be transcribed by the chief investigator and analysed to extract themes that will answer the research question. Delphi study: which aims to develop a diet and physical activity intervention for children and young adult with JIA.

Septic arthritis of the native hip poses significant diagnostic and therapeutic challenges as it is considered an orthopedic emergency requiring urgent surgery. Inadequate or delayed treatment is disastrous, resulting in irreversible destruction of the joint. Initial treatment usually comprises of arthroscopic or open debridement. According to literature 25-38% of first debridement fail, requiring a second or third intervention or even a staged procedure with femoral head resection and a temporary antibiotic-loaded cement spacer. Understanding who will succeed and who will fail after a single surgical debridement of a septic hip joint could improve shared decision-making and could help decide which patient would benefit from resection arthroplasty straight away. In order to gain more insight in clinical factors associated with failure of a single surgical debridement in septic arthritis of the native hip, a retrospective cohort study will be conducted. There are no detailed guidelines for the treatment of septic arthritis of the native hip. Therefore, treatment today is similar to treatment 10 years ago (i.e. the treating surgeon does what he thinks is best for the patient). This lack of a structured approach is the reason for this retrospective study and we aim to come up with principles to guide treatment of future patients.

The aims of this study are: • To assess 14-3-3 η (eta) protein antibodies in the serum of rheumatoid arthritis patients and its relation to disease activity and severity. • To investigate the role of 14-3-3 η (eta) protein in the diagnosis or assessment of subclinical carotid artery atherosclerosis.

Psoriatic arthritis(PsA) and psoriasis(Ps) are two systemic inflammatory diseases linked with rash of psoriasis, but there's still great controversy regarding the exact relationship between them. Our study is to investigate the characteristics and differences of the ultrasonic imaging of enthesopathy in the lower extremity in patients with PsA and Ps, to explore the risk factors of Ps developing into PsA in the long term course.

The purpose of this study is to study the role of the Immune System in causing arthritis in patients with Hepatitis C.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease of unknown etiology characterized by peripheral polyarthritis, symmetric, which leads to joint destruction and deformity. It is estimated that the RA reaches about 0.5% of the population. According to data from DATASUS, was responsible for 26,671 hospitalizations, 229 deaths and cost exceeding R$ 20 million in 2005-2007. The main bodily changes are related to joint problems, however, systemic manifestations are also found in organs such as lung and heart. Although cardiovascular diseases are the most responsible of the deaths AR, pulmonary complications are common and account for 10% to 15% of all mortality. Anaya and colleagues point out that the pulmonary involvement contributes significant morbidity and mortality in these patients. Although pulmonary involvement is a frequent manifestation in RA, the prevalence and nature of rheumatoid lung disease has not yet been precisely established. Several lung disorders such as interstitial pulmonary fibrosis, pulmonary nodules and bronchiolitis may ocorrer1. Laitinen et al point out that studies of lung function appear to be a valuable helper for radiography in the evaluation of pulmonary involvement in connective tissue diseases. Previous studies indicate that patients with RA have an increased incidence of abnormal lung function, according to assessments including spirometry, lung volume tests and diffusion capacity of carbon monoxide. Thus, the main objective of this study is to analyze the respiratory mechanics of patients with RA. Specific objectives were to seek to understand whether a relationship exists between duration of rheumatoid disease and lung function in these patients. For this, the investigators used 18 subjects in the control group, free of pulmonary disease and / or heart, all nonsmokers. In the RA group, a total of 72 patients divided into 4 groups of 18 volunteers each, classified according to disease duration (0-5 years, 6-10 years, 11-15 years and> or = 16 years). It is noteworthy that all patients in the RA group will also be non-smokers, since it is already known in the literature that smoking impairs lung function. All individuals will perform the function test with a trained technician and qualified to function. The examinations will be conducted: Forced oscillation technique and spirometry, in that order.

Ankylosing spondylitis (AS), rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are the most common rheumatic diseases dealt with rheumatologists in Taiwan. In previous studies, the 3 diseases all have broad impacts on health-related quality of life of patients and drive enormous economic burden on patients and society. The objective of this study is to compare health-related quality of life and disease-related costs between patients with the 3 different diseases. We will invite at least 100 patients with AS, RA or SLE respectively who are regularly followed in the outpatient clinic of the Division of Rheumatology at Taichung Veterans General Hospital (VGHTC) to participate in the study. Patients who have cognitive impairment, who are older than 65 years old or younger than 18 years old, who have overlapping syndrome of any 2 of the 3 rheumatic diseases (eg. RA overlapping with SLE) or who have visited rheumatologists in the outpatient clinics at VGHTC for less than 4 times in 2008 will be excluded. Patients who agree to take part will attend a comprehensive clinical examination in the outpatient department. Patients will complete a questionaire including demographic and disease characteristics, and health-related quality of life at the time of survey. The questionaires about disease-related costs will be completed once per quarter throughout 2009. The four questionaires about costs will be given at the time of initial survey and will be returned by returned by mail or in the following outpatient clinics visits every 3 months in 2009. The result of this study will help patients to realize their own health-related quality of life and disease-related costs and help government in Taiwan to realize the socioeconomic burden of the 3 common rheumatic diseases and to allocate health care resources more properly in the future.

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have an increased risk of cardiovascular events. This increased risk is thought to be driven by inflammation-induced endothelial dysfunction, an initial step in atherogenesis. Treatment with TNFalpha inhibitors (TNFi) improve endothelial function in patients with RA. Discontinuation of TNFi could therefore worsen endothelial function even in the absence of recurrence of systemic inflammation or reactivation of arthritis. If stopping TNFi results in worsening of endothelial function this would strongly suggest a higher cardiovascular risk in association with TNFi-wthdrawal

With the current therapeutic focus in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) shifting from symptom control to actual disease modification there is a growing demand for more objective and sensitive ways to evaluate structural damage in the joints of these RA patients. Conventional radiography of bone erosion and joint-space narrowing was the only imaging approach available for this. Now significant advantages are offered in terms of speed, precision and scope over conventional methods. These advances include digital radiography and computer aided analysis as well as MRI which allow earlier identification of bone erosion and direct visualization of pre-erosive changes, such as bone inflammation and synovitis. Molecular markers of tissue turnover have been used for decades in clinical trials of osteoporosis, but only recently in RA. In contrast to serum C-reactive protein (CRP), which is only a nonspecific indicator of systemic inflammation and not directly reflective of structural damage to joints, more recently developed molecular markers of synovial, cartilage and bone turnover might provide a better indication of destructive activity of the disease. Compared with radiography and MRI assessment, molecular markers are particularly useful for patient selection and treatment, but can be used in a variety of ways to accelerate clinical trials and reduce the uncertainty and cost of drug development. In this project, we will set up a panel of molecular markers which could show an association with the MRI results and have a quantitative correlation with the degree of joint damage (sensitivity: 90 - 95%; specificity: 80 - 90%). The work in this project includes imaging markers evaluation and molecular markers analysis: X-ray scoring; MRI; Bone degradation markers; Bone formation; Cartilage degradation; Cartilage synthesis; Synovial turnover and Others. Nine molecular markers will be examined: CartiLaps ELISA/CTX-II, Urinary CrossLaps ELISA/CTX-I, and Serum osteocalcin, Serum COMP, MMP-3, Serum PINP, Serum PICP, Urinary PIIINP and Serum YKL-40. The data will be managed to evaluate the significance of correlation to image and clinical reports, so as to get a simple algorithm of parameters (molecular markers) which can reflect the structural damage of joint using mathematics and computer science.