Quantitative and Qualitative Urinary Cellular Patterns Correlate with Progression of Murine Glomerulonephritis

The kidney is a nonregenerative organ composed of numerous functional nephrons and collecting ducts (CDs). Glomerular and tubulointerstitial damages decrease the number of functional nephrons and cause anatomical and physiological alterations resulting in renal dysfunction. It has recently been reported that nephron constituent cells are dropped into the urine in several pathological conditions associated with renal functional deterioration. We investigated the quantitative and qualitative urinary cellular patterns in a murine glomerulonephritis model and elucidated the correlation between cellular patterns and renal pathology

Economic evaluation of platelet-rich-plasma versus hyaluronic acid for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis. Scenarios to 1 and 5 years

Purpose: The increasing incidence of total joint arthroplasty reflects the rises of osteoarthritis (OA) prevalence. OA is a degenerative pathology affecting joints with a significant impact on quality of life causing pain, leading to social life limitations and loss of work productivity. According to the World Health Organization, OA is one of the most important causes of people's disability. The burden of the disease is correlated with a huge economic impact on the health care systems. Intra-articular infiltration therapies are used between the pharmacological and the surgical phases, in order to delay surgery. This work aims to carry out an economic evaluation on the use of the Platelet-Rich-Plasma (PRP) therapy in the treatment of knee OA. The comparator is the hyaluronic acid, i.e. the standard therapy for drug-resistant OA that does not benefit or has short term benefits (<1 month) with intra-articular corticosteroids.Methods: A cost-effectiveness analysis has been performed using a decision-analytic model considering two scenarios: short period and medium period. The effectiveness outcomes are reported in term of quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), while costs are expressed in euro ((sic)). The adopted perspective is the Italian National Health System (INHS). The results are shown through the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) examining the PRP versus the comparator. Moreover, deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses have been performed to test the robustness of the results.Results: The PRP therapy, for patients with moderate to severe knee OA in the Italian context, is cost-effective versus HA with ICERs of (sic)1,524/QALY in the 1 year and (sic)162/QALY in the 5 year scenarios.Conclusions: In the short term, it seems that the PRP therapy is cost-effective in the treatment of knee OA versus the HA therapy. However, more research is needed to assess its cost-effectiveness in the long term and to figure out if this treatment may be an efficient resource allocation for the INHS

In silico validation of the autoinflammatory disease damage index

INTRODUCTION: Autoinflammatory diseases can cause irreversible tissue damage due to systemic inflammation. Recently, the Autoinflammatory Disease Damage Index (ADDI) was developed. The ADDI is the first instrument to quantify damage in familial Mediterranean fever, cryopyrin-associated periodic syndromes, mevalonate kinase deficiency and tumour necrosis factor receptor-associated periodic syndrome. The aim of this study was to validate this tool for its intended use in a clinical/research setting. METHODS: The ADDI was scored on paper clinical cases by at least three physicians per case, independently of each other. Face and content validity were assessed by requesting comments on the ADDI. Reliability was tested by calculating the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) using an 'observer-nested-within-subject' design. Construct validity was determined by correlating the ADDI score to the Physician Global Assessment (PGA) of damage and disease activity. Redundancy of individual items was determined with Cronbach's alpha. RESULTS: The ADDI was validated on a total of 110 paper clinical cases by 37 experts in autoinflammatory diseases. This yielded an ICC of 0.84 (95% CI 0.78 to 0.89). The ADDI score correlated strongly with PGA-damage (r=0.92, 95%\u2009CI 0.88 to 0.95) and was not strongly influenced by disease activity (r=0.395, 95%\u2009CI 0.21 to 0.55). After comments from disease experts, some item definitions were refined. The interitem correlation in all different categories was lower than 0.7, indicating that there was no redundancy between individual damage items. CONCLUSION: The ADDI is a reliable and valid instrument to quantify damage in individual patients and can be used to compare disease outcomes in clinical studies