209 research outputs found
Serum IL-15 in patients with early systemic sclerosis: a potential novel marker of lung disease
The pathogenesis of systemic sclerosis (SSc) is characterized by autoimmunity, vasculopathy and fibrosis. IL-15 is a pleiotropic cytokine that has impact on immune, vascular and connective tissue cells. We therefore investigated IL-15 in the circulation of patients with early SSc and explored possible associations of serum IL-15 with vasculopathy and fibrosis. Serum levels of IL-15 were analysed in 63 consecutive patients with SSc of disease duration less than 4 years and without disease-modifying treatment. Thirty-three age-matched healthy control individuals were enrolled. Serum IL-15 levels were increased in the sera of SSc patients compared with that of healthy control individuals (P < 0.01). Serum IL-15 levels correlated with impaired lung function, assessed both by the vital capacity (P < 0.05) and by the carbon monoxide diffusion capacity (P < 0.05). The association between IL-15 and the vital capacity remained after multiple linear regression analysis. Patients with intermediate serum IL-15 levels had a higher prevalence of increased systolic pulmonary pressure compared with patients with either low or high serum IL-15 levels (P < 0.05). Moreover, increased serum IL-15 levels were associated with a reduced nailfold capillary density in multivariable logistic regression analysis (P < 0.01). Serum IL-15 levels also correlated inversely with the systolic blood pressure (P < 0.01). We conclude that IL-15 is associated with fibrotic as well as vascular lung disease and vasculopathy in early SSc. IL-15 may contribute to the pathogenesis of SSc. IL-15 could also be a candidate biomarker for pulmonary involvement and a target for therapy in SSc
Von Willebrand factor propeptide as a marker of disease activity in systemic sclerosis (scleroderma)
In 44 consecutive patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc), plasma concentrations of von Willebrand factor (vWf) were higher than those of the vWf propeptide, but the propeptide showed less variability within patient subgroups. Higher values of the propeptide were observed in patients with early pulmonary involvement. A closer correlation of the propeptide than of vWf to biochemical markers of activity was also evident. Our results suggest that the propeptide, despite a shorter circulating half-time and lower plasma concentrations than vWf, is more useful in the assessment of disease activity in SSc
Cohomology of bundles on homological Hopf manifold
We discuss the properties of complex manifolds having rational homology of
including those constructed by Hopf, Kodaira and
Brieskorn-van de Ven. We extend certain previously known vanishing properties
of cohomology of bundles on such manifolds.As an application we consider
degeneration of Hodge-deRham spectral sequence in this non Kahler setting.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of 2007 conference on Several complex
variables and Complex Geometry. Xiamen. Chin
Hyperholomorpic connections on coherent sheaves and stability
Let be a hyperkaehler manifold, and a torsion-free and reflexive
coherent sheaf on . Assume that (outside of its singularities) admits a
connection with a curvature which is invariant under the standard SU(2)-action
on 2-forms. If the curvature is square-integrable, then is stable and its
singularities are hyperkaehler subvarieties in . Such sheaves (called
hyperholomorphic sheaves) are well understood. In the present paper, we study
sheaves admitting a connection with SU(2)-invariant curvature which is not
necessarily square-integrable. This situation arises often, for instance, when
one deals with higher direct images of holomorphic bundles. We show that such
sheaves are stable.Comment: 37 pages, version 11, reference updated, corrected many minor errors
and typos found by the refere
Characterizing normal crossing hypersurfaces
The objective of this article is to give an effective algebraic
characterization of normal crossing hypersurfaces in complex manifolds. It is
shown that a hypersurface has normal crossings if and only if it is a free
divisor, has a radical Jacobian ideal and a smooth normalization. Using K.
Saito's theory of free divisors, also a characterization in terms of
logarithmic differential forms and vector fields is found and and finally
another one in terms of the logarithmic residue using recent results of M.
Granger and M. Schulze.Comment: v2: typos fixed, final version to appear in Math. Ann.; 24 pages, 2
figure
Differential Forms on Log Canonical Spaces
The present paper is concerned with differential forms on log canonical
varieties. It is shown that any p-form defined on the smooth locus of a variety
with canonical or klt singularities extends regularly to any resolution of
singularities. In fact, a much more general theorem for log canonical pairs is
established. The proof relies on vanishing theorems for log canonical varieties
and on methods of the minimal model program. In addition, a theory of
differential forms on dlt pairs is developed. It is shown that many of the
fundamental theorems and techniques known for sheaves of logarithmic
differentials on smooth varieties also hold in the dlt setting.
Immediate applications include the existence of a pull-back map for reflexive
differentials, generalisations of Bogomolov-Sommese type vanishing results, and
a positive answer to the Lipman-Zariski conjecture for klt spaces.Comment: 72 pages, 6 figures. A shortened version of this paper has appeared
in Publications math\'ematiques de l'IH\'ES. The final publication is
available at http://www.springerlink.co
Effects and safety of rituximab in systemic sclerosis: An analysis from the European Scleroderma Trial and Research (EUSTAR) group
Objectives: To assess the effects of Rituximab (RTX) on skin and lung fibrosis in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc) belonging to the European Scleroderma Trial and Research (EUSTAR) cohort and using a nested case-control design. Methods: Inclusion criteria were fulfilment of American College of Rheumatology classification criteria for SSc, treatment with RTX and availability of follow-up data. RTX-treated patients were matched with control patients from the EUSTAR database not treated with RTX. Matching parameters for skin/lung fibrosis were the modified Rodnan Skin Score (mRSS), forced vital capacity (FVC), follow-up duration, scleroderma subtype, disease duration and immunosuppressive co-treatment. The primary analysis was mRSS change from baseline to follow-up in the RTX group compared with the control group. Secondary analyses included change of FVC and safety measures. Results: 63 patients treated with RTX were included in the analysis. The case-control analysis in patients with severe diffuse SSc showed that mRSS changes were larger in the RTX group versus matched controls (N=25; -24.0±5.2% vs-7.7±4.3%; p=0.03). Moreover, in RTX-treated patients, the mean mRSS was significantly reduced at follow-up compared with baseline (26.6±1.4 vs 20.3±1.8; p=0.0001). In addition, in patients with interstitial lung disease, RTX prevented significantly the further decline of FVC compared with matched controls (N=9; 0.4±4.4% vs-7.7±3.6%; p=0.02). Safety measures showed a good profile consistent with previous studies in autoimmune rheumatic diseases. Conclusions: The comparison of RTX treated versus untreated matched-control SSc patients from the EUSTAR cohort demonstrated improvement of skin fibrosis and prevention of worsening lung fibrosis, supporting the therapeutic concept of B cell inhibition in SSc
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