ON THE TERMINOLOGY OF SPONDYLOARTHRITIS

By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, spondyloarthritis studies have accumulated a certain number of terms that are obsolete, but used by physicians in their everyday speech, on the one hand, and a great variety of different definitions, on the other hand. In January 2014, the first organizational meeting of the Expert Group on Spondyloarthritis, Association of Rheumatologists of Russia, decided that its primary task should be to order the terminology used in this area. The authors primarily collected the terms, which had been already used in medical vocabulary, and then divided them into two categories: obsolete definitions and terms to be finalized and unified. This publication gives guidelines for using the medical terms relevant to spondyloarthritis and separately discusses how to correctly write the term sacroiliitis

Development of the autoinflammatory disease damage index (ADDI)

OBJECTIVES: Autoinflammatory diseases cause systemic inflammation that can result in damage to multiple organs. A validated instrument is essential to quantify damage in individual patients and to compare disease outcomes in clinical studies. Currently, there is no such tool. Our objective was to develop a common autoinflammatory disease damage index (ADDI) for familial Mediterranean fever, cryopyrin-associated periodic syndromes, tumour necrosis factor receptor-associated periodic fever syndrome and mevalonate kinase deficiency. METHODS: We developed the ADDI by consensus building. The top 40 enrollers of patients in the Eurofever Registry and 9 experts from the Americas participated in multiple rounds of online surveys to select items and definitions. Further, 22 (parents of) patients rated damage items and suggested new items. A consensus meeting was held to refine the items and definitions, which were then formally weighted in a scoring system derived using decision-making software, known as 1000minds. RESULTS: More than 80% of the experts and patients completed the online surveys. The preliminary ADDI contains 18 items, categorised in the following eight organ systems: reproductive, renal/amyloidosis, developmental, serosal, neurological, ears, ocular and musculoskeletal damage. The categories renal/amyloidosis and neurological damage were assigned the highest number of points, serosal damage the lowest number of points. The involvement of (parents of) patients resulted in the inclusion of, for example, chronic musculoskeletal pain. CONCLUSIONS: An instrument to measure damage caused by autoinflammatory diseases is developed based on consensus building. Patients fulfilled a significant role in this process

COMPETENCY MODEL FOR IMPROVEMENT MEDICAL UNIVERSITY TEACHER’S QUALIFICATION

Despite the huge advantages of introducing a professional standard, a number of contradictions in the formation and development of a professional trajectory of medical university teacher’s activity were not avoided. These contradictions were caused by the lack of uniform universal competencies of a university teacher, the multiformity and diversity of existing competences, the lack of an approved National Qualifications Framework, which would serve as a regulating link between qualifications by education and professional qualifications. The ratio of the following blocks will be included in the competence model of medical school teacher: the level of professional and job status; the category of a teacher depending on the discipline being taught; competences (administrative-service, communicative, educational-methodical – general teaching, special professional). Teacher training programs should be modular, with a division into a universal module and a special module. The universal module can be used as a separate program, and it can be one of the modules of other professional development programs (aimed at developing general teaching competences). The special module is aimed at the formation and development of special professional pedagogical competences

THE RUSSIAN VERSION OF THE CHILDHOOD HEALTH ASSESSMENT QUESTIONNAIRES(CHAQ) AND THE CHILD HEALTH QUESTIONNAIRES (CAQ)

We report herein the results of the cross-cultural adaptation and validation into the Russian language of the parent’s version of two health related quality of life instruments. The Childhood Health Assessment Questionnaire (CHAQ) is a disease specific health instrument that measures functional ability in daily living activities in children with juvenile chronic arthritis (JCA). The Child Health Questionnaire (CHQ) is a generic health instrument designed to capture the physical and psychosocial well-being of children independently from the underlying disease. The Russian CHAQ-CHQ were fully validated with 3 forward and 3 backward translations. A total of 146 subjects were enrolled: 86 patients with JCA (23% systemic onset, 39% polyarticular onset, 15% extended oligoarlicular subtype, and 23% persistent oligoarticular subtype) and 60 healthy children. The CHAQ clinically discriminated between healthy subjects and JCA patients, with the systemic, polyarticular and extended oligoarticular subtypes having a higher degree of disability, pain, and a lower overall wellbeing when compared to their healthy peers. Also the CHQ clinically discriminated between healthy subjects and JCA patients, with the systemic onset, polyarticular onset and extended oligoarticular subtypes having a lower physical and psychosocial well-being when compared to their healthy peers. In conclusion the Russian version of the CHAQ-CHQ is a reliable, and valid tool for the functional, physical and psychosocial assessment of children with JCA

Studying the pathogenic role of catecholamines in the development of retinopathy of prematurity on an experimental model of the disease

Purpose. To study the involvement of dopamine and noradrenaline in the pathogenesis of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) on an original rat model of the disease.Material and methods. The study was conducted on 41 newborn Wistar rats (82 eyes), divided into 2 groups: experimental (EROP, rats with experimental ROP, n = 21) and control (n = 20). The rats were taken out of the experiment on the 7th, 14th, 23rd and 28th days of life. All rat pups were given binocular enucleation at the indicated times, whereupon the eyeballs were dissected along the limbus and the cornea, lens, hyaloid system, and vitreous were removed. The retina was isolated from the eye cup. The isolated retinal samples were homogenized in 10 volumes of 0.1 n HClO4 containing 50 pmol/ml (or more) of 3,4-dihydroxybenzylamine (DBA), using an ultrasonic homogenizer (Labsonic M, Sartorius), centrifuged at 2000g for 20 minutes, and the norepinephrine, dopamine and precursor of dopamine — L-3,4 dihydroxyphenylalanine (L-DOPA) were determined in the resulting supernatant. The contents of substances were measured using reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography with electrochemical detection (Amperometric detector LC-4B, Bioanalytical Systems, USA) set at the potential of 850 mV.Results. On the 7th day, on which avascular retinal zones in both groups of animals existed, no significant differences were found in the content of monoamines in the retina of rats with EROP and in the control group. On the 28th day, the content of noradrenaline, dopamine and L-DOPA in the retina of the experimental group was significantly increased compared with the control. On day 23, corresponding to the peak of neovascularization in the EROP model applied, the level of norepinephrine in the retina of experimental group rats was significantly higher, while the level of L-DOPA was significantly lower compared to the control group. The dopamine level was comparable in both study groups and similar to the level of L-DOPA in the control group. On the 28th day, corresponding to the beginning of EROP regression accompanied by vascular activity decrease, the content of dopamine and L-DOPA remained lower than in the control group.Conclusion. During the development of pathological neovascularization of rat pup retina with EROP, the level of noradrenaline is growing, revealing a peak corresponding to the period of pronounced pathological growth of retinal vessels within the applied model, which indicates to the fact of noradrenalin proangiogenic properties and its direct participation in the pathogenesis of ROP. The level of dopamine and its predecessor, L-DOPA, increased towards the 14th day as compared to its level detected on the 7th day, which may be due to the maturation of the amacrine cells producing, and then, on the day 23. i. e. during the period corresponding to the maximum peak of angiogenesis, its relative decrease of L-DOPA was noted. It can be assumed that the lack of this monoamine, and hence insufficient manifestation of its anti-angiogenic properties contributes to the development of uncontrolled neovascularization of the retina