Infliximab treatment reduces depressive symptoms in patients with ankylosing spondylitis: an ancillary study to a randomized controlled trial (ASSERT)

Background: Patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) are at increased risk of depression. This increased risk has been hypothesized to be solely secondary due to AS-related symptoms, or additionally due to a common inflammatory pathway. From a clinical perspective, it is important to know whether treatment with tumor necrosis factor alpha inhibitors reduces depressive symptoms, while from a pathophysiological point of view, it would be insightful to understand whether such an effect would be a direct result of reduced inflammation, the result of reduced AS-related symptoms, or both. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of infliximab on depressive symptoms in patients with AS in a randomized-controlled trial setting. Methods: Data were retrieved from a subgroup of patients from the AS Study for the Evaluation of Recombinant Infliximab Therapy (ASSERT). Patients were randomly allocated to infliximab (n = 16) or placebo (n = 7) until week 24, after which all received infliximab until week 54. Associations between treatment group and depressive sy

Molecular imaging in oncology: the acceptance of PET/CT and the emergence of MR/PET imaging

In the last decade, PET-only systems have been phased out and replaced with PET-CT systems. This merger of a functional and anatomical imaging modality turned out to be extremely useful in clinical practice. Currently, PET-CT is a major diagnostic tool in oncology. At the dawn of the merger of MRI and PET, another breakthrough in clinical imaging is expected. The combination of these imaging modalities is challenging, but has particular features such as imaging biological processes at the same time in specific body locations

The association between pulse wave velocity and cognitive function: the Sydney Memory and Ageing Study

OBJECTIVES Pulse wave velocity (PWV) is a measure of arterial stiffness and its increase with ageing has been associated with damage to cerebral microvessels and cognitive impairment. This study examined the relationship between carotid-femoral PWV and specific domains of cognitive function in a non-demented elderly sample. METHOD Data were drawn from the Sydney Memory and Ageing Study, a cohort study of non-demented community-dwelling individuals aged 70–90 years, assessed in successive waves two years apart. In Wave 2, PWV and cognitive function were measured in 319 participants. Linear regression was used to analyse the cross-sectional relationship between arterial stiffness and cognitive function in the whole sample, and separately for men and women. Analysis of covariance was used to assess potential differences in cognition between subjects with PWV measurements in the top and bottom tertiles of the cohort. Covariates were age, education, body mass index, pulse rate, systolic blood pressure, cholesterol, depression, alcohol, smoking, hormone replacement therapy, apolipoprotein E ε4 genotype, use of anti-hypertensive medications, history of stroke, transient ischemic attack, myocardial infarction, angina, diabetes, and also sex for the whole sample analyses. RESULTS There was no association between PWV and cognition after Bonferroni correction for multiple testing. When examining this association for males and females separately, an association was found in males, with higher PWV being associated with lower global cognition and memory, however, a significant difference between PWV and cognition between males and females was not found. CONCLUSION A higher level of PWV was not associated with lower cognitive function in the whole sample.Joel Singer, Julian N. Trollor, John Crawford, Michael F. O’Rourke, Bernhard T. Baune, Henry Brodaty, Katherine Samaras, Nicole A. Kochan, Lesley Campbell, Perminder S. Sachdev, Evelyn Smit