Inclusion criteria: patients fulfilling the American College of Rheumatology criteria for SLE and presenting with pericarditis. The study consisted of 22 female and one male SLE patients with a mean age of 26 years (range = 13-65). Ten out of 23 patients (43%) presented pericarditis with a mean duration of illness before the diagnosis of pericarditis of 2 years. Pericardial rub was the commonest sign (seven cases), followed by dyspnea (six cases) and chest pain (six cases). www.selleckchem.com/products/ldn193189.html The diagnosis of pericarditis was proven by echocardiography in all cases. Typical serological findings included anti-nuclear antibodies, anti-double-stranded DNA, and anti-Sm antibodies. Chest X-ray revealed

cardiomegaly in all the patients. Electrocardiogram showed abnormal repolarization (seven patients) and low voltage QRS complexes (three cases). Treatment consisted of steroids administration. Four patients had relapse of pericarditis during subsequent lupus flares. This short series shows that non-infectious pericarditis is common in SLE patients in Africa.”
“We study the pressure induced phase transitions in BeO at zero and finite temperatures using ab initio density functional perturbation theory. The aim is to primarily focus on the vibrational properties of this alkaline earth oxide under pressure to understand the mechanism of phase transitions. Static calculations predict the B4 to B1 transition

to occur at 112 GPa at 0 K. Zero-point vibrations lower this pressure by 7 GPa. Dynamically, the B4 phase is found to be stable up to a pressure

of about 820 GPa. On the other hand, the material in its B1 phase cannot be decompressed below 35 GPa. The possible CA3 transition path as well as the associated transition mechanism has been investigated from phonon excitations. The P-T stability field of wurtzite (B4) and rocksalt (B1) structure phases of BeO has been discussed using quasiharmonic approximation. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3359706]“
“Treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is monitored with the disease activity score (DAS28), for which the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) is needed. Apart from the original gold A 1155463 standard method, other methods like the Alifax Test-1TH apparatus are widely used in laboratory worldwide. We compared ESR values obtained by the Alifax Test-1Th apparatus and the gold standard method for 218 RA patients. We found a good correlation (r = 0.87) between the Alifax Test-1TH results and the gold standard method. A good correlation (r = 0.96) was also found for the DAS28 results obtained with both methods. The number of patients that were misclassified when the Alifax Test-1TH is used is reasonable for both the ESR (14.7%) and the DAS28 (10.6%). These results suggest that it may be useful to determine the ESR by the Alifax Test-1TH, with a DAS28 misclassification in less than 11% of the patients.”
“Atopic dermatitis (AD) can be categorized into the extrinsic and intrinsic types.