Sulfasalazine

BACKGROUND: Chronic Spontaneous Urticaria (CSU) is an endogenous disorder that is strongly associated with autoimmunity, particularly with immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibody to the alpha subunit of the IgE receptor seen in 35-40% of patients. Basophils and cutaneous mast cells can be activated and lead to a late-phase-like perivascular infiltration about small venules and hive formation. METHODS: Review of current literature. RESULTS: Antibody to thyroid antigens are seen in 25% of patients; a small fraction of these may be clinically hypothyroid (Hashimoto's Thyroiditis)...

The objectives of this study are to evaluate whether tapering or stopping strategies of pharmacologic therapies are efficacious for maintaining remission in patients with axial spondyloarthritis (axSPA) and to analyze the risk factors of disease relapse. Patients diagnosed as axSPA with ankylosing spondylitis disease activity score based on C reactive protein (ASDAS-CRP) ≤2.0 for at least 3 months were randomized into three groups: continuing non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) (group 1), tapering NSAIDs and DMARDs by 50% (group 2), or discontinuing NSAIDs and DMARDs (group3) after 6 months of tapering...

A 33-year-old man presented with new-onset, asymmetric, migratory oligoarthritis in the setting of several weeks of nausea and vomiting, diarrhoea, fevers and dysuria. He was initially treated in the inpatient setting with broad-spectrum antibiotics due to concern for an evolving sepsis presentation. Arthrocentesis of a large right knee effusion revealed inflammatory synovial fluid without findings suggestive of septic arthritis. Human leucocyte antigen B27 was positive and, taken together with the antecedent history of gastroenteritis, dysuria and inflammatory oligoarthritis, the clinical diagnosis was most consistent with reactive arthritis...

PURPOSE: This study reports the effect of disease-modifying therapies for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) on systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP, DBP) over 6 months and incident hypertension over 3 years in a large administrative database. METHODS: We used administrative Veterans Affairs databases to define unique dispensing episodes of methotrexate, leflunomide, sulfasalazine, hydroxychloroquine, tumor necrosis factor inhibitors, and prednisone among patients with RA...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of sulfasalazine (SSZ) on the presence of Pneumocystis jirovecii (P. jirovecii) in the lungs of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. METHODS: We retrospectively studied episodes of suspected P. jirovecii pneumonia (PJP) which were examined for P. jirovecii with polymerase chain reaction (PCR). We employed a test negative design case-control study; the cases were episodes of suspected PJP that were positive for PCR, and the controls were episodes of suspected PJP that were negative for PCR...

The sodium-independent cystine-glutamate antiporter plays an important role in extracellular cystine uptake. It comprises the transmembrane protein, xCT and its chaperone, CD98. Because glutathione is only weakly cell membrane permeable, cellular uptake of its precursor, cystine, is known to be a key step in glutathione synthesis. Moreover, it has been reported that xCT expression affects the progression of tumors and their resistance to therapy. Sulfasalazine is an inhibitor of xCT that is known to increase cellular oxidative stress, giving it anti-tumor potential...

A 38-year-old woman was referred to our hospital for rheumatologic manifestations (migrant arthritis and tenosynovitis), without psoriasis or family history of psoriasis, gastroenteric manifestations, or recent genitourinary infections. The instrumental and laboratory tests have suggested a diagnosis of undifferentiated seronegative HLA-B27-positive spondyloarthritis with predominantly peripheral involvement. The symptoms were very severe and resistant to anti-inflammatory drugs and steroids. She had a history of hyaline-vascular unicentric Castleman's disease (HBV, HIV, and HHV-8 negative) treated with surgery resection...

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4 antibodies) are a standard of care for advanced melanoma. Novel toxicities comprise immune-related adverse events (irAE). With increasing use, irAE require recognition, practical management strategies, and multidisciplinary care. We retrospectively evaluated the incidence, kinetics, and management of irAE in 41 patients receiving anti-PD-1 antibody therapy (pembrolizumab) for advanced melanoma. 63% received prior anti-CTLA-4 antibody therapy (ipilimumab)...

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE: Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) is an autosomal recessive disease, characterized by recurrent, self-limited attacks of fever with serositis. Various diseases were reported to be associated with FMF. The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency and characteristics of sacroiliitis in children with FMF. METHODS: Files of FMF patients who had been seen in 2 reference hospitals in Ankara were retrospectively evaluated. Patients with FMF and concomitant sacroiliitis were included to the study...

Portulaca oleracea L. (P. oleracea) is an herb that is widely used in traditional medicine to treat various diseases. However, its effects on inflammatory diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), are not yet well characterized. Here, we investigated the impact of the ethyl acetate (EtOAc) and ethanol (EtOH) extracts of P. oleracea on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammatory responses and phosphorylation of ERK, JNK, and p38 expression in RAW264.7 macrophages. In addition, the inhibitory effects of these extracts and fractions on 3% dextran sulphate sodium (DSS)-induced ulcerative colitis were examined using an ICR mouse model...

AIMS: The study aimed to assess the efficacy and safety of tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFI) with methotrexate (MTX) vs. oral triple therapy in patients with active rheumatoid arthritis (RA), showing inadequate response to MTX. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We performed a meta-analysis of three randomized controlled trials (RCTs) (913 MTX-resistant RA patients) to examine the relative efficacy and safety of TNFI+MTX compared to triple therapy (hydroxychloroquine, sulfasalazine, MTX) in patients with RA responding inadequately to MTX...

Vagal stimulation controls systemic inflammation and modulates the immune response in different inflammatory conditions, including inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). The released acetylcholine binds to alpha-7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α7 nAChR) to suppress pro-inflammatory cytokines. This provides a new range of potential therapeutic approaches for controlling inflammatory responses. The present study aimed to assess whether galantamine (Galan) anti-inflammatory action involves α7 nAChR in a 2,4,6-trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS) model of colitis and to estimate its possible molecular pathways...

This paper reports a novel fabric phase sorptive extraction-high performance liquid chromatography-photodiode array detection (FPSE-HPLC-PDA) method for the simultaneous extraction and analysis of three drug residues (ciprofloxacin, sulfasalazine, and cortisone) in human whole blood, plasma, and urine samples, generally administered in human patients to treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The drugs of interest were well resolved using a Luna C18 column (250 mm × 4.6 mm; 5 μm particle size) in gradient elution mode within 20 min...

Specific ethnic genetic backgrounds associated with risk of Stevens-Johnson syndrome/toxic epidermal necrolysis(SJS/TEN) especially in Asians. However, there have been no large cohort, multiple-country epidemiological studies of medication risk related to SJS/TEN in Asian populations. Thus, we analyzed the registration databases from multiple Asian countries who were treated during 1998-2017. A total 1028 SJS/TEN cases were identified by ALDEN. Furthermore, those medications labeled by USFDA as carrying a risk of SJS/TEN were also compared to the common causes of SJS/TEN in Asian countries...

A major challenge in targeting orally administered drugs to colon is their passage through the long gastrointestinal path comprising highly variant conditions in terms of pH, viscosity, gut motility and microbial flora. Approaches of pH controlled release and microbially triggered release have proved to be successful in achieving colon targeting only to a partial extent. In an attempt to improve targeting, both these approaches have been combined together with the approach of liquisolid technology which, hitherto, remains unexplored for colon targeting...

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of a sulfasalazine-containing hyaluronic acid (SASP/HA) systems on in vitro anti-inflammation and the alleviation of cartilage degradation in both lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated synoviocytes and a rat model of monosodium iodoacetate (MIA)-induced osteoarthritis (OA). The SASP/HA resulted in long-term release of SASP from the SASP/HA for up to 60 days in a sustained manner. In vitro studies performed using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay revealed that the SASP/HA was able to effectively and dose-dependently inhibit the mRNA expression levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as matrix metalloproteinases-3 (MMP-3), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) in LPS-stimulated synoviocytes...

BACKGROUND: Galactosylation of immunoglobulin G (IgG) is reduced in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and assumed to correlate with inflammation and altered humoral immunity. IgG hypogalactosylation also increases with age. To investigate dependencies in more detail, we compared IgG hypogalactosylation between patients with RA, patients with axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA), and healthy control subjects (HC), and we studied it in RA on the background of HLA-DRB1 shared epitope (SE), anticitrullinated protein antibodies (ACPA), and/or rheumatoid factor (RF) status...

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic relapsing disease without satisfactory treatments, in which intestinal inflammation and disrupted intestinal epithelial barrier are two main pathogeneses triggering UC. Berberrubine (BB) is deemed as one of the major active metabolite of berberine (BBR), a naturally-occurring isoquinoline alkaloid with appreciable anti-UC effect. This study aimed to comparatively investigate the therapeutic effects of BB and BBR on dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced mouse colitis model, and explore the potential underlying mechanism...

AIM: To determine the scope of acute hypoglycemic effects for certain anti-rheumatic medications in a large retrospective observational study. METHODS: Patients enrolled in the Veterans Affairs Rheumatoid Arthritis (VARA) registry were selected who, during follow-up, initiated treatment with tumor necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi's, including etanercept, adalimumab, infliximab, golimumab, or certolizumab), prednisone, or conventional disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), and for whom proximate random blood glucose (RBG) measurements were available within a window 2-wk prior to, and 6 mo following, medication initiation...

BACKGROUND: Sirukumab, a high-affinity human monoclonal antibody that selectively binds to interleukin-6, has demonstrated efficacy in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in global phase 1 and phase 2 studies. The present study evaluated the safety and efficacy of sirukumab, as monotherapy in Japanese patients with RA refractory to methotrexate or sulfasalazine. METHODS: In this phase 3, double-blind study, 122 patients (age ≥ 20 years) were randomized (1:1, 61 patients in each arm) to sirukumab administered subcutaneously: 50 mg once every 4 weeks (q4w) or 100 mg once every 2 weeks (q2w) through 52 weeks...