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Clinical Conference Oral type II collagen in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. A six-month double blind placebo-controlled study. 2000
Cazzola M, Antivalle M, Sarzi-Puttini P, Dell'Acqua D, Panni B, Caruso I. · Rheumatology Unit, Azienda Ospedaliera Polo Universitario L. Sacco, Milan, Italy. · Clin Exp Rheumatol. · Pubmed #11072596 No free full text.
Abstract: OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficacy of oral chicken type II collagen (CII) in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS: Sixty patients with clinically active RA of long duration (mean 7.2 +/- 5.5 years) were treated for 6 months with oral chicken CII at 0.25 mg/day (n = 31) or with placebo (n = 29) in a double-blind randomized study. RESULTS: The response rate to treatment of the collagen-treated group, based on the ACR 20% criteria, was higher than that of the control group but this difference was not statistically significant at any time. Intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis did not show statistically significant improvement in any of the several secondary outcome measures over the 6 months of the study in the collagen-treated patients in comparison with the placebo-treated group. However, in 2 collagen-treated patients we observed a clinical remission according to the criteria of the American Rheumatism Association. CONCLUSION: Our study seems to show that the oral treatment of RA patients with chicken CII is ineffective and results in only small and inconsistent benefits. Furthermore, our results raise the possibility that in a sub-group of patients oral collagen administration, usually considered devoid of harmful effects, may actually induce disease flares.
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Article Anti-polymer antibodies are correlated with pain and fatigue severity in patients with fibromyalgia syndrome. 2008
Sarzi-Puttini P, Atzeni F, Di Franco M, Lama N, Batticciotto A, Iannuccelli C, Dell'Acqua D, de Portu S, Riccieri V, Carrabba M, Buskila D, Doria A, Valesini G. · Rheumatology Unit, L. Sacco University Hospital, Milan, Italy. · Autoimmunity. · Pubmed #18176867 No free full text.
Abstract: OBJECTIVE: To investigate the prevalence of antipolymer antibody (APA) in patients with fibromyalgia (FM) and to examine its association with FM severity symptoms. METHODS: The study population consisted of 79 FM patients and 75 controls: 32 with psoriatic arthritis and 43 with rheumatoid arthritis APA levels were indirectly assayed using a commercial ELISA kit from Corgenix (Westmister, Colorado, USA). Optical density (OD) values were recorded on duplicates of each of the reference and patient samples. Among clinical variables we investigated pain, measured according to visual analog scales (VAS: 0-100), fatigue, stiffness, anxiety, depression, all measured by VAS (0-100), and health status measured by Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ). RESULTS: Sixteen of the 79 FM patients (20.3%) and 12/78 controls (15.4%) were positive for APAs (P = 0.536). Following ROC analysis, area under curve (AUC) was 0.49 (95% CI: 0.40, 0.58). Focusing on FM patients, we observed a correlation between APA titre and pain (tau: - 0.221; P = 0.020) and fatigue (tau: - 0.205; P = 0.032) at univariate analysis. Binomial regression analysis, controlling for clinical and demographic variables, showed that pain (PPR: 0.923; P = 0.007) and fatigue (PPR: 0.948; P = 0.024) were significantly associated with APA test sensitivity. CONCLUSIONS: APA test exhibited a low sensitivity in FM patients and it did not distinguish this group of patients from the controls enrolled in this study. Interestingly, positive APA test prevalence increased with less severe pain or fatigue.
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