Autoimmune joint diseases in Late Medieval skeletal sample from Croatia.

Analysis of 25 skeletons from Late Medieval cemetery Uzdolje-Grablje near Knin, Croatia, revealed three cases of systematic pathological changes to joints. Observed pathological lesions were examined macroscopically and radiologically and compared to the available paleopathological standards in order to formulate a differential diagnosis. In all three cases observed changes were most consistent with autoimmune joint diseases including ankylosing spondylitis, juvenile idiopathic arthritis and psoriatic arthritis. Based on published clinical studies, we suggest that the high prevalence of autoimmune diseases in our skeletal sample stems from the genetic basis of the autoimmunity, and that three individuals describe here are possibly closely related.

[Wars in the history of rheumatology]. / Le guerre nella storia della reumatologia.

Some important discoveries in the history of rheumatology happened during war periods. It is well known that arthritis associated with conjunctivitis and urethritis, following dysenteric episodes, has been described during the First World War from the German Hans Reiter and, nearly contemporarily, from the French Nöel Fiessinger and Edgar Leroy. Less known is instead the fact that the first cases of sympathetic algoneurodystrophy have been reported by the American Silas Weir Mitchell in soldiers wounded by fire-arms, during the Civil War of Secession. Other war episodes have been crucial for the development of some drugs now abundantly applied to the care of rheumatic diseases. The discovery of therapeutic effects of immunosuppressive agents, in fact, happened as an indirect consequence of the use of poison gas, already during the First World War (mustard gas), but above all after an episode in the port of Bari in 1943, where an American cargo boat was sunk. It had been loaded with a quantity of cylinders containing a nitrogenous mustard, whose diffusion in the environment provoked more than 80 deaths owing to bone marrow aplasia.Moreover, the history of the cortisone shows a strict link to the Second World War, when Germany imported large quantities of bovine adrenal glands from Argentina, with the purpose of producing some gland extracts for the Luftwaffe aviators, in order to increase their performance ability.

Bases infecciosas de la artritis reactiva / Infectious basis of reactive artritis

La artritis reactiva es un trastorno clínico en el cual se conoce con bastante certidumbre el o los agentes etiológicos que precipitan el proceso. Este conocimiento básico del inicio de la enfermedad ha permitido grandes avances en nuestro conocimiento de su patogenia. Sin embargo, a pesar de un mejor entendimiento de la patogenia que conduce al cuadro clínico, el tratamiento específico de la enfermedad permanece elusivo. Por otro lado, la introducción de agentes biológicos, especialmente los inhibidores del factor de necrosistumoral-alfa (TNFa), ha facilitado un mejor control tanto de la artritis periférica como axial. Inhibidores del TNFa son de gran utilidad, sobre todo en el control de las manifestaciones clínicas comprometiendo las articulaciones sacroilíacas y espondilíticas. Cierta reservación queda, sin embargo, a las complicaciones potenciales secundaria a la inhibición a largo plazo del TNFa teniendo en cuenta el papel importante que juega esta citoquina en la protección delhuésped contra agentes infecciosos

A mariner with crippling arthritis and bleeding eyes.

A 41-year-old mariner developed acute arthritis affecting his legs more than his arms or hands during a violent storm on his return from the first of four voyages of discovery. He experienced repeated attacks of the arthritis over the ensuing 14 years, which on at least two occasions were accompanied by painful eyes "much affected with bleeding." He died shortly before his 55 birthday "quite paralyzed and bedridden." Who was he, and what was the likely etiology of his disorder?

[Reiter disease or reactive arthritis?]. / Morbus Reiter oder reaktive Arthritis?

There is an ongoing international discussion on whether the condition reactive arthritis should be named after a former Nazi functionary. The German dermatological community should participate in this debate. In 1916, Hans Reiter described a disease with the symptoms urethritis, conjunctivitis, and arthritis, which was later named after him. After becoming titular professor in May 1918, Reiter was appointed director of the regional public health department Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1926. At the same time he taught social hygiene at the University of Rostock, where he was appointed full professor in 1928. In 1931, Hans Reiter became a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). In July 1932 he was elected representative of the NSDAP to the seventh assembly of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. After becoming its acting director in July 1933, Reiter was appointed president of the Reich public health department in Berlin on October 1, 1933. Both his excellent professional qualifications, as well as his National Socialist attitudes, were considered key criteria for taking over this important position. As the president of the Reich public health department, Reiter was said to have known about the conduct of experiments with typhus-fever at the concentration camp Buchenwald in which 250 humans died. From the end of the Second World War until 1947, Reiter was imprisoned in the Nuremberg Prison for War Criminals, but never convicted of a crime.