Articles: disease.
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Behçet's syndrome is a rare, chronic multisystemic inflammatory disorder also known as the Silk Route disease due to its geographical distribution. Behçet's syndrome is a multifactorial disease and infectious, genetic, epigenetic, and immunological factors contribute to its pathogenesis. ⋯ The therapeutic approach is tailored on the basis of patient-specific manifestations and relies on glucocorticoids, colchicine, and traditional and biological immunosuppressants. Despite progress in the knowledge and management of the disease, unmet needs in diagnostics, monitoring, prediction, and treatment personalisation challenge clinical practice, making Behçet's syndrome a complex disorder associated with an increased risk of morbidity.
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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of neurodegenerative impairment in elderly people. Clinical characteristics include short-term memory loss, confusion, hallucination, agitation, and behavioural disturbance. Owing to evolving research in biomarkers AD can be discovered at early onset, but the disease is currently considered a continuum, which suggests that pharmacotherapy is most efficacious in the preclinical phase, possibly 15 - 20 years before discernible onset. ⋯ Another important factor in this development is the emergence of precision medicine that aims to tailor treatment to specific patients or patient subgroups. This relatively new platform would categorize AD patients on the basis of parameters like clinical aspects, brain imaging, genetic profiling, clinical genetics and epidemiological factors. This review enlarges on recent progress in the design and clinical use of antisense molecules, antibodies, antioxidants, small molecules and gene editing to stop AD progress and possibly reverse the disease on the basis of relevant biomarkers.
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Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a serious disease with a lifetime prevalence of up to 3.6% in women and 0.3% in men. Abnormally low weight and the associated starvation partly account for its somatic and mental manifestations. ⋯ Marked weight loss in childhood and adolescence can trigger AN in the presence of a predisposition to this disease. Patients and their families should receive psychoeducation regarding the symptoms of starvation and their overlap with those of AN. Important objectives are to shorten the duration of the illness, minimize mortality and the risk of chronic illness, and to identify pharmacological approaches to treatment.
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Comparative Study Observational Study
The Agreement Between Diagnoses as Stated by Patients and Those Contained in Routine Health Insurance Data—Results of a Data Linkage Study.
The frequency of medical diagnoses is a figure of central importance in epidemiology and health services research. Prevalence estimates vary depending on the underlying data. For a better understanding of such discrepancies, we compared patients' diagnoses as reported by themselves in response to our questioning with their diagnoses as stated in the routine data of their health insurance carrier. ⋯ Diagnoses as stated by patients often differ from those found in routine health insurance data. Discrepancies that can be considered negligible were found for only two of the 11 diseases that we studied. Our investigation confirms that these two sources of data yield different estimates of prevalence. Age is a key factor; further reasons for the discrepancies should be investigated, and avoidable causes should be addressed.