PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

CRP genetic variants crucial in interpreting inflammatory disease activity

2010-09-22
(Press-News.org) CRP is commonly used as a serum marker for inflammation or infection, but the genetic effects of CRP variants on acute-phase serum CRP concentrations in patients with rheumatoid arthritis may be large enough to have a clinically relevant impact on the assessment of inflammatory disease activity, which in turn may influence therapeutic decision making. Furthermore, failure to take into account the potential for genetic effects may result in the inappropriate reassurance or under-treatment of patients simply because they carry low-CRP associated genetic variants. These are the results of a study by Timothy Vyse from Imperial College London, UK, and colleagues, and published in this week's PLoS Medicine.

The authors studied two independent sets of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (from the UK, and New Zealand and Australia). The authors used a genetic technique (a tagSNP approach) and linear modelling to show that common genetic variants at the CRP locus were associated with acute-phase serum CRP in both patient sets, translating into an approximate 3.5 fold change in expected serum CRP between carriers of two common CRP variants. For example when ESR = 50mm/hr the expected CRP serum level for one common CRP variant was 43.1mg/L and for another CRP variant was 14.2mg/L.

These finding raise questions about the interpretation of acute-phase serum CRP as they suggest that there is a significant association between CRP variants and acute-phase serum CRP concentrations in a group of patients with rheumatoid arthritis. CRP thresholds are used as a diagnostic component of formal clinical algorithms and play an important role in a clinician's decision making process when diagnosing inflammatory disease and making treatment decisions. The authors conclude: "The accuracy and utility of these algorithms might be improved by using a genetically adjusted CRP measurement."

INFORMATION: Funding: This work was funded by an Arthritis Research UK (http://www.arthritisresearchuk.org) fellowship awarded to Benjamin Rhodes (grant number 18544). The Health Research Council of New Zealand (http://www.hrc.gov.nz) funded the collection of New Zealand patients. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Citation: Rhodes B, Merriman ME, Harrison A, Nissen MJ, Smith M, et al. (2010) A Genetic Association Study of Serum Acute-Phase C-Reactive Protein Levels in Rheumatoid Arthritis: Implications for Clinical Interpretation. PLoS Med 7(9): e1000341. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000341

IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000341

PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: www.plos.org/press/plme-07-09-vyse.pdf

CONTACT:

Timothy Vyse

Imperial College London
Rheumatology Section, Division of Medicine
Du Cane Road
London, W12 ONN
United Kingdom
+442083832339
t.vyse@imperial.ac.uk


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Community health workers can effectively manage children with malaria and pneumonia

2010-09-22
Community Health Workers can safely and effectively provide integrated management of pneumonia and malaria to communities by dispensing amoxicillin to children with non-severe pneumonia and artemether-lumefantrine to children with malaria (after using rapid diagnostic tests). Furthermore, these activities result in a significant increase in the proportion of appropriately-timed antibiotic treatment for non-severe pneumonia and in a significant decrease in inappropriate use of antimalarials. These are the results from a study by Kojo Yeboah-Antwi from the Boston School ...

Too many systematic reviews?

2010-09-22
There are now 75 clinical trials and 11 systematic reviews of trials published every day, with no signs this pace is slowing. How will we ever cope?, ask Hilda Bastian, Paul Glasziou, and Sir Iain Chalmers in this week's PLoS Medicine, who also decry the continued poor quality of many of these studies. Analysing the history and growth of reviews of evidence, the authors recommend that we must now reduce unnecessary trials and prioritise truly systematic review of the literature, so that the needs of patients, clinicians, and policymakers are met. "Streamlining and innovation ...

Asian efforts in AIDS vaccine development step up

2010-09-22
Regional efforts towards an AIDS vaccine must be strengthened and harmonized, says a new article in this week's PLoS Medicine Magazine. Yiming Shao from the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention in Beijing, China and colleagues from a range of Asian and international agencies announce the formation of AVAN—the AIDS Vaccine for Asia Network—that aims to strengthen its regional efforts in finding an AIDS vaccine. The authors say that AVAN has been set up to help facilitate the development of a regional AIDS vaccine strategy that will: accelerate research ...

Self-management counseling for patients with heart failure does not improve outcomes

2010-09-22
Patients with mild to moderate heart failure who received educational materials and self-management counseling in an attempt to improve adherence to medical advice did not have a reduced rate of death or hospitalization compared to patients who received educational materials alone, according to a study in the September 22/29 issue of JAMA. There have been advances in the development of effective therapies for heart failure, but challenges remain in the delivery of these therapies to patients. "Patient nonadherence to heart failure drugs ranges from 30 percent to 60 percent ...

Shorter biological marker length in aplastic anemia patients linked to higher relapse, death rates

2010-09-22
Among patients receiving immunosuppressive therapy for severe aplastic anemia (a condition in which the bone marrow is unable to produce blood cells), the length of telomeres (chromosome markers of biological aging) was not related to the response to treatment but was associated with a higher rate of relapse (return to low blood cell counts) and lower overall survival, according to a study in the September 22/29 issue of JAMA. Severe aplastic anemia is characterized by life-threatening cytopenias (blood cell count below normal), but this condition can be treated by bone ...

Risk of infection after ultrasound-guided procedures is low, study suggests

2010-09-22
The incidence of serious infection after common ultrasound-guided procedures, such as biopsy, fine-needle aspiration (a form of biopsy) and thoracentesis (procedure involving needle drainage of the chest cavity) is low, according to a study in the October issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (www.ajronline.org). Ultrasound imaging, also called ultrasound scanning or sonography, involves exposing part of the body to high-frequency sound waves to produce pictures of the inside of the body. "Ultrasound-guided procedures are safe, effective and accurate in that ...

Adverse cardiac events are rare after a negative cardiac CTA exam, study suggests

2010-09-22
Adverse cardiac events are rare one year after patients are admitted to the emergency room with low-to-moderate risk chest pain and are discharged due to a negative cardiac computed tomography angiogram (CTA), according to a study in the October issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (www.ajronline.org). Cardiac CTA is a noninvasive heart-imaging test that determines whether fatty deposits or calcium deposits have built up in the coronary arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle. Earlier discharge of patients with low-to-moderate risk chest pain after ...

Rethinking how hospitals react when a patient's health deteriorates

2010-09-22
The growing use of rapid response teams dispatched by hospitals to evaluate patients whose conditions have suddenly deteriorated may be masking systemic problems in how hospitals care for their sickest patients, says a prominent Johns Hopkins patient safety expert. In a commentary published in the Sept. 22 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and co-author Eugene Litvak, Ph.D., president of the Institute for Healthcare ...

Ecologists find new clues on climate change in 150-year-old pressed plants

Ecologists find new clues on climate change in 150-year-old pressed plants
2010-09-22
Plants picked up to 150 years ago by Victorian collectors and held by the million in herbarium collections across the world could become a powerful – and much needed – new source of data for studying climate change, according to research published this week in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Ecology. The scarcity of reliable long-term data on phenology – the study of natural climate-driven events such as the timing of trees coming into leaf or plants flowering each spring – has hindered scientists' understanding of how species respond to climate change. But ...

Ultrashort laser ablation enables novel metal films

2010-09-22
Washington, D.C. (September 21, 2010) -- Laser ablation is well known in medical applications like dermatology and dentistry, and for more than a decade it has been used to vaporize materials that are difficult to evaporate for high-tech applications like deposition of superconductors. Now researchers in the Journal of Applied Physics, which is published by the American Institute of Physics have studied the properties of femtosecond laser ablation plumes to better understand how to apply them to specialized films. Salvatore Amoruso at University of Naples, Italy and ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Reality check: making indoor smartphone-based augmented reality work

Overthinking what you said? It’s your ‘lizard brain’ talking to newer, advanced parts of your brain

Black men — including transit workers — are targets for aggression on public transportation, study shows

Troubling spike in severe pregnancy-related complications for all ages in Illinois

Alcohol use identified by UTHealth Houston researchers as most common predictor of escalated cannabis vaping among youths in Texas

Need a landing pad for helicopter parenting? Frame tasks as learning

New MUSC Hollings Cancer Center research shows how Golgi stress affects T-cells' tumor-fighting ability

#16to365: New resources for year-round activism to end gender-based violence and strengthen bodily autonomy for all

Earliest fish-trapping facility in Central America discovered in Maya lowlands

São Paulo to host School on Disordered Systems

New insights into sleep uncover key mechanisms related to cognitive function

USC announces strategic collaboration with Autobahn Labs to accelerate drug discovery

Detroit health professionals urge the community to act and address the dangers of antimicrobial resistance

3D-printing advance mitigates three defects simultaneously for failure-free metal parts 

Ancient hot water on Mars points to habitable past: Curtin study

In Patagonia, more snow could protect glaciers from melt — but only if we curb greenhouse gas emissions soon

Simplicity is key to understanding and achieving goals

Caste differentiation in ants

Nutrition that aligns with guidelines during pregnancy may be associated with better infant growth outcomes, NIH study finds

New technology points to unexpected uses for snoRNA

Racial and ethnic variation in survival in early-onset colorectal cancer

Disparities by race and urbanicity in online health care facility reviews

Exploring factors affecting workers' acquisition of exercise habits using machine learning approaches

Nano-patterned copper oxide sensor for ultra-low hydrogen detection

Maintaining bridge safer; Digital sensing-based monitoring system

A novel approach for the composition design of high-entropy fluorite oxides with low thermal conductivity

A groundbreaking new approach to treating chronic abdominal pain

ECOG-ACRIN appoints seven researchers to scientific committee leadership positions

New model of neuronal circuit provides insight on eye movement

Cooking up a breakthrough: Penn engineers refine lipid nanoparticles for better mRNA therapies

[Press-News.org] CRP genetic variants crucial in interpreting inflammatory disease activity