eLetters

276 e-Letters

published between 2015 and 2018

  • Letter about the paper "Predictive role of capillaroscopic skin ulcer risk index in systemic sclerosis: a multicentre validation study." by M Sebastianni.
    Sophie Blaise
    Dear Editor,

    We read with interest the paper of M Sebastianni et al about the predictive role of capillaroscopic skin ulcer risk index in systemic sclerosis(1). The authors suggest that the CSURI score "can represent a feasible and reliable clinical tool in the routine evaluation of patients". However, we feel this report raises serious issues concerning the reproducibility of the methodology. When calculating the score, the num...

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  • Treatment of osteoarthritis
    shamsul A Bhuiyan,MD

    Dear Editor,

    Osteoarthritis can occur at almost any joint, osteoarthritis of the knee is the most common type. More than 10 million Americans have osteoarthritis of the knee. Most people affected are older than 45 years.[1]

    The published article by K L Bennel et al. lacks patient’s information like patient’s age, sex, weights, heights, and family history. In this article K L Bennel et al. concluded that p...

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  • Expensive antirheumatic drugs - final reply
    Pierre Geborek

    Dear Editor,

    We have read the reply from the authors to our letter. As a final remark we would like to repeat our previous statement: “From a clinician’s perspective we think that health economic analyses in RA should always be done with intimate knowledge of the patient cohort on which the calculations are based. Any projection and modelling in other settings must be carried out with great care in close collabora...

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  • Testing for gene-environment interaction
    Karen H. Costenbader

    Dear Editor,

    We read with interest the recent article “Smoking is a risk factor for anti-CCP antibodies only in RA patients that carry HLA-DRB1 Shared Epitope alleles” by Dr. Linn-Rasker and colleagues in Leiden.[1] The question of whether true gene-environment interaction exists between genotype (HLA-DRB1 shared epitope, SE) and an environmental exposure, cigarette smoking in this case, both of which are known to...

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  • Recalculation of the prevalence rates of ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic arthritis in France
    Nurullah Akkoc

    Dear Editor,

    We read the study by Saraux et al (1) on the prevalence of Spondyloathropaties (SpA)s in France with great interest. In this well designed study, 9395 subjects were interviewed over the phone using a structured questionnaire. SpA was confirmed in 29 patients by the patient’s rheumatologist or by clinical examination. Of these 29 patients, 13 had ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and 11 had psoriatic arthri...

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  • Anti-CCP antibodies: different specificities for different diseases?
    Marco Fusconi

    Dear Editor,

    We found the study by Elkayam et al (1) of great interest, as it sheds more light on the complex scenario of anti cyclic citrullinated peptide antibodies (anti-CCP), originally described as highly specific for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Indeed, it appears that an immune response to these proteins is initiated (though it’s not yet clear how sustained) in several other conditions. It is not surprising t...

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  • Sex differences in leptin and adiponectin levels
    Solbritt Rantapää Dahlqvist

    Dear Editor,

    We read with great interest the recently published article by Otero et al. [1] where they report significantly increased levels of leptin, adiponectin and visfatin plasma levels in patients with rheumatoid arthritis compared with controls. Their finding concerning the level of leptin in rheumatoid arthritis contradicts the results from other studies including our own (Ljung et al, submitted).[2][3] Our co...

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  • How do we best define autoantibodies?
    Frederick W. Miller

    Dear Editor,

    I read with interest the recent study describing clinical characteristics associated with antibodies that bind fragments of the Mi-2 beta antigen1 and it raises the question of how to best define autoantibodies. For economic reasons, ELISAs are taking over much of the immunology testing in rheumatology practice today. ELISAs are being used despite their often limited validation and the many concerns...

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  • A probable flaw of the RAMRIS atlas
    Anibal J Morillo

    Dear Editor,

    I have read with interest the series of articles presenting the development of a working atlas for Rheumatoid Arthritis scoring with MRI. It will surely prove to be a useful and objective tool for the evaluation, prognosis and follow-up of these patients. I find however, a practical issue that could render this scoring system as somewhat cumbersome, unless a better protocol for clinical MRI is develope...

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  • Genetic risk factors for chlamydia infection
    Prasanta Padhan

    Dear Editor,

    Genetic factors not only plays an important role for development of reactive arthritis in patients with Chlamydia infection, but genetic factors also influence the susceptibility to such infections. Recently recurrent Chlamydia infection have been found to be associated with human leukocyte antigen variants (DRB1*03-DQB1*04 and DQB1*06). Again a G-C-C haplotype corresponding to variants at IL-10 (e...

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