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For a searchable version of these abstracts, please visit www.acrabstracts.org. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) is the most common inflammatory rheumatic disease affecting people older than 50 years and is 2–3 times more common in women. The most common symptoms are pain and morning stiffness in the shoulder and pelvic girdle and the onset may be acute or develop over a few days to weeks. General symptoms such as fatigue, fever and weight loss may occur, likely driven by systemic IL‐6 signalling. The pathology includes synovial and periarticular inflammation and muscular vasculopathy. A new observation is that PMR may appear as a side effect of cancer treatment with checkpoint inhibitors. The diagnosis of PMR relies mainly on symptoms and signs combined with laboratory markers of inflammation. Imaging modalities including ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography with computed tomography are promising new tools in the investigation of suspected PMR. However, they are still limited by availability, high cost and unclear performance in the diagnostic workup. Glucocorticoid (GC) therapy is effective in PMR, with most patients responding promptly to 15–25 mg prednisolone per day. There are challenges in the management of patients with PMR as relapses do occur and patients with PMR may need to stay on GC for extended periods. This is associated with high rates of GC‐related comorbidities, such as diabetes and osteoporosis, and there are limited data on the use of disease‐modifying antirheumatic drugs and biologics as GC sparing agents. Finally, PMR is associated with giant cell arteritis that may complicate the disease course and require more intense and prolonged treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the list of the authors including the Ackermann U.; Akamatsu G.; and the Akhurst T.

Introduction For many cancers, tumour hypoxia is an adverse prognostic factor, and increases chemoradiation resistance; its importance in non-small cell lung cancer ( NSCLC) is unproven. This study evaluated tumoural hypoxia using fluoroazomycin arabinoside (18 F- FAZA) positron emission tomography ( PET) scans among patients with locoregionally advanced NSCLC treated with definitive chemoradiation. Methods Patients with stage IIIA-IIIB NSCLC underwent 18 F- FAZA PET scans and 18F-2-deoxyglucose ( FDG)- PET scans within 4 weeks of commencing and 8 weeks following conventionally-fractionated concurrent platinum-based chemoradiation (60 Gy). Intra-lesional hypoxic volumes of the primary and nodal masses were compared with FDG-PET metabolic volumes. Baseline tumoural hypoxia was correlated with disease free survival ( DFS). Results Seventeen patients underwent pre-treatment 18 F- FAZA PET and FDG-PET scans. Intra-lesional hypoxia was identified on 11 scans (65%). Baseline lesional hypoxic volumes were consistently smaller than FDG-PET volumes ( P = 0.012). There was no statistical difference between the mean FDG-PET volumes in patients with or without baseline hypoxia ( P = 0.38). Eight patients with baseline hypoxia had post treatment 18F- FAZA scans and 6 of these (75%) had resolution of imageable hypoxia following chemoradiation. The DFS was not significantly different between the hypoxic or non-hypoxic groups (median 0.8 years and 1.3 years respectively, P = 0.42). Conclusions Intra-lesional hypoxia, as detected by 18 F- FAZA PET, was present in 65% of patients with locally-advanced NSCLC and resolved in the majority of patients following chemoradiation. Larger studies are required to evaluate the prognostic significance of the presence and resolution of hypoxia assessed by PET in NSCLC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim 18Fluorodeoxyglucose (18FDG) positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) is an established part of staging in a wide variety of malignancies. Incidental abnormal uptake of 18FDG of unknown significance is frequently encountered. Therefore, we investigated patients with abnormal colonic uptake of 18FDG, determined by PET/CT images, using colonoscopy. Method The radiology reports of all patients referred to a tertiary referral centre for a PET/CT scan were reviewed retrospectively. Patients with abnormal colonic uptake of 18FDG were identified and the PET/CT findings were correlated with colonoscopic findings. Results Of 555 consecutive patients identified over a 26-month period, 53 had abnormal colonic uptake of 18FDG, as determined by PET/CT images. Twenty-nine were not investigated following discussion in a specialist multidisciplinary (MDT) meeting, according to local protocol. Twenty out of 24 patients investigated by endoscopy had a colonic lesion correlating to the site identified on the PET/CT image: 16 patients had tubulovillous adenomas (nine of which were > 10 mm), two had invasive adenocarcinomas, two had diverticular disease and one had collagenous colitis; no colonic lesion was detected in three. These findings were incidental and not related to the primary diagnosis for which the scan was being performed. Accordingly, a positive predictive value of 83% is associated with the finding of abnormal uptake of 18FDG on PET/CT images. Conclusion Incidental abnormal colonic uptake of 18FDG, determined by a PET/CT scan requires definitive colonic investigation in patients suitable for further treatment because significant colonic pathology is frequently identified. The benefit of this approach should be discussed in specialist MDT meetings and tailored to each patient; however, national guidelines for management are required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oxygen supply and diffusion into tissues are necessary for survival. The oxygen partial pressure (pO), which is a key component of the physiological state of an organ, results from the balance between oxygen delivery and its consumption. In mammals, oxygen is transported by red blood cells circulating in a well-organized vasculature. Oxygen delivery is dependent on the metabolic requirements and functional status of each organ. Consequently, in a physiological condition, organ and tissue are characterized by their own unique 'tissue normoxia' or 'physioxia' status. Tissue oxygenation is severely disturbed during pathological conditions such as cancer, diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, etc., which are associated with decrease in pO, i.e. 'hypoxia'. In this review, we present an array of methods currently used for assessing tissue oxygenation. We show that hypoxia is marked during tumour development and has strong consequences for oxygenation and its influence upon chemotherapy efficiency. Then we compare this to physiological pO values of human organs. Finally we evaluate consequences of physioxia on cell activity and its molecular modulations. More importantly we emphasize the discrepancy between in vivo and in vitro tissue and cells oxygen status which can have detrimental effects on experimental outcome. It appears that the values corresponding to the physioxia are ranging between 11% and 1% O whereas current in vitro experimentations are usually performed in 19.95% O, an artificial context as far as oxygen balance is concerned. It is important to realize that most of the experiments performed in so-called normoxia might be dangerously misleading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, 1179 papers were published that involved the application of optical biosensors. Reported developments in instrument hardware, assay design, and immobilization chemistry continue to improve the technology's throughput, sensitivity, and utility. Compared to recent years, the widest range of platforms, both traditional format and array-based, were used. However, as in the past, we found a disappointingly low percentage of well-executed experiments and thoughtful data interpretation. We are alarmed by the high frequency of suboptimal data and over-interpreted results in the literature. Fortunately, learning to visually recognize good-and more importantly, bad-data is easy. Using examples from the literature, we outline several features of biosensor responses that indicate experimental artifacts versus actual binding events. Our goal is to have everyone, from benchtop scientists to project managers and manuscript reviewers, become astute judges of biosensor results using nothing more than their eyes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An author index for the April 2014 issue of the "Internal Medicine Journal" is presented.

An author index for the September 2012 issue of the "Internal Medicine Journal" is presented.

The author index for the September 2006 issue of the "Internal Medicine Journal" is presented.