ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: Uveitis is the inflammation of the middle layer of the eye, the uvea, and is a major cause of blindness. None of the instruments used in clinical practice are, in themselves, sufficient to evaluate the course of uveitis. Therefore, it is necessary to develop instruments enabling standardized measurement of inflammatory activity. We developed a composite disease activity index for patients with uveitis known as UVEDAI, which considers the overall activity of the eye. The objective of this study was to validate the composite index of ocular inflammation, UVEDAI. METHODS: A multicenter cross-sectional study involving eight Spanish tertiary hospitals. Sixty-two patients aged ≥ 18 years with acute uveitis were recruited. Participants gave informed consent before participating in the study. A full ophthalmological examination was performed by two ophthalmologists to determine inflammatory activity: one used the UVEDAI score and the other used clinical judgment. The ophthalmologists did not share their findings with each other to avoid introducing bias into the analysis. Construct validity was established by means of factor analysis. The criterion validity of the index was determined using an ordinal multivariate regression model, in which the dependent variable was the degree of uveal inflammation (mild, moderate, or high/severe). Cut-off points were determined for the UVEDAI and for the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. RESULTS: Sixty-two patients were included. Total variance with the three components accounted for 80.32% of the construct validity. Each of the three components identified one type of eye involvement. The discriminatory capacity of UVEDAI was 0.867 (95% CI 0.778; 0.955 p < 0.001) for mild versus moderate-high and 0.946 (95% CI 0.879; 1.000 p < 0.001) for high versus mild-moderate. CONCLUSIONS: The variables included in UVEDAI enable ocular inflammatory activity to be described with a high degree of accuracy. The index may be used to evaluate and classify this activity with considerable discriminatory power.
ABSTRACT
El dolor es uno de los trastornos que más afecta y preocupa a las personas y es el síntoma acompañante que con mayor frecuencia motiva una consulta médica. La frecuencia de dolor crónico en la población adulta española es muy elevada y constituye un problema generalizado de salud pública. La Escuela de Pacientes ha demostrado su eficacia en el abordaje terapéutico de determinados procesos (hipertensión arterial, diabetes mellitus y otros). Presentamos la primera Escuela de Paciente con Dolor Crónico No Oncológico y Tratamiento Opioide implementada en el Sistema Sanitario Público de Andalucía, que ha permitido formar a pacientes en el tratamiento opioide para su proceso de dolor crónico no oncológico con muy elevado grado de satisfacción
Pain is one of the disorders that most affects and worries people and is the accompanying symptom that most often motivates medical consultation. The frequency of chronic pain in the spanish adult population is very high and constitutes a general publich health problem. The school of patients has demonstrated its effectiveness in the therapeutic approach of certain processes (arterial hypertension, mellitus diabetes and others). We present the first school of patients with non-onologic chronic pain and opioid treatment implemented in the Public Health System of Andalusia, which has allowed training patients with opioids treatment for their pain processes with a very high satisfaction degree
Subject(s)
Humans , Chronic Pain/drug therapy , Analgesics, Non-Narcotic/therapeutic use , Opioid-Related Disorders/prevention & control , Pain Clinics/organization & administration , Pain Management/methods , Patient Education as Topic/organization & administrationSubject(s)
Epidermolysis Bullosa Dystrophica/complications , Pregnancy Complications , Adult , Cesarean Section , Female , Humans , PregnancyABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ regulatory T-cells (nT(Reg)) have been shown to suppress immune responses to autoantigens and to other diverse antigens, this suppression is mainly mediated by a cell contact-dependent mechanism not yet fully defined. It has been reported that both human natural and induced T(Reg) exert cytotoxic activity against autologous target cells, which suggests that the perforin/granzyme pathway may be a relevant candidate mechanism for the suppressive function of T(Reg). Previous reports have shown that oestradiol (E2) modulates T(Reg) percentages and function. METHODS: We have evaluated in pregnant and non-pregnant subjects perforin intracellular expression in CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ regulatory T-cells by flow cytometry in whole blood, ex-vivo purified nT(Reg) and ex-vivo purified nT(Reg) after TCR and E2 stimulation. The expression of cellular degranulation markers was also phenotypically determined. RESULTS: We show that E2 expands T(Reg), enhances in vitro T(Reg) function and induces a T(Reg) phenotype in activated responder (CD4+CD25) T-cells, further increasing the expression of perforin on T(Reg) than in vitro T-cell receptor activation alone. We found surface lysosomal-associated membrane glycoproteins (LAMP)-1 and LAMP-2 expression by T(Reg), which is a sign of cell degranulation and therefore of cytotoxicity exerted by these cells. CONCLUSION: Our data demonstrates the presence of functional T(Reg) cytotoxic properties in biological systems and support the concept that E2 enhances the number and function of T(Reg) suggesting the potential interaction between E2 and immunoregulatory mechanisms.