Introduction:Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory illness characterized by polyarthritis of small and large joints which in the course of time may progress to disability.Material and methods:In our prospective study were included 951 patients (females 730, and males 221 respectively) with an average age 51.3 year old, diagnosed with RA in accordance with ACR-EULAR/2010 criteria. The purpose of the paper is to investigate gender, age, group age by gender, level of education, residing place, nationality, religion, social condition, marital status, and vocation in our patients. Statistical processing has been carried out with program SPSS 20.0, SigmaStat 2.03, SigmaPlot 2000, MedCalc and Excel 2010. Most present group age was 40 – 49 year old with difference in distribution based on gender.Results:The largest number of them had completed secondary education, most of them originated from rural areas, were farmers by vocation and housewives. The database created by this survey can serve for building the RA patients’ national registry. This registry can serve for further researches and planning the management of RA as a systemic rheumatic disease that has an immense social, economic and health impact. Largest portion of RA patients were farmers and housewives respectively (38% and 32.2% respectively). Vocations such as: retail sellers, workers in administration, education, factory, maintenance, and artisan workers had similar incidence in both genders that ranged from 9.7% to 6.2%, whereas these vocations among males ranged from 11.3% to 2.7%.

In this study we compared, simultaneously, the growth-inhibitory effect of Hypericum perforatum L. extracts, containing various amounts of hyperforin (A 3.25%; B 2.21%; C 0.21% w/w) and flavonoids (A and B 5.3%; C 10% w/w), but closely same amounts of naphthodiantrones (0.3%) on two leukaemic cell lines K562 and U937 in the WST-1 assay. The GI50 (concentration of extracts which caused 50% of cell growth inhibition) for H. perforatum extracts analysed and characterized by HPLC for their biologically active constituents was 248.3-621.3 microg mL(-1) in K562 and 378.2-911.7 microg mL(-1) in U937 cells. The corresponding values of the three main groups were 1.6-3.9 microM naphthodianthrones, 1.0-40.7 microM phloroglucinols and 30.5-68.5 microM flavonoids. The results of this study supported the hypothesis that, apart from hyperforin and flavonoids, other components of the extract could be involved in its growth-inhibitory effect that it exerts without light activation.

One “Quality by Design” approach is the focus on the variability of the properties of the active substance. This is crucially important for active substances that are obtained from natural resources such as herbal plant material and extracts. In this paper, we present various strategies for the development of herbal products especially taking into account the natural batch-to-batch variability (mainly of the dry mass) of tablets that contain a fixed amount of tincture. The following steps in the development have been evaluated for the outcome of the physico-chemical properties of the resulting tablets and intermediates: concentration of the tincture extracted from Echinacea fresh plant, loading of the concentrate onto an inert carrier, the respective wet granulation and drying step, including milling, and the adjuvant excipients for the tablet compression step. The responses that were investigated are the mean particle size of the dried and milled granulates, compaction properties and disintegration time of the tablets. Increased particle size showed a significant increase of the disintegration time and a decrease of the compaction properties. In addition, our results showed that the particle size has a great dependency on the ratio of liquid to carrier during the wet granulation process. Thus, the variability of the respective parameters tested was influenced by the performed strategies, which is how the tincture correlated to its dry mass and the relation of the amount of carrier used. In order to optimize these parameters, a strategy considering the above-mentioned points has to be chosen.

BACKGROUND:Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune inflammatory disease characterised by intra-articular and extra-articular manifestations but very rarely with coxitis.AIM:This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of coxitis, clinical changes, and its correlation with the parameters of inflammatory activity.METHODS:A cohort of 951 patients diagnosed with ACR/EULAR (American College of Rheumatology/European League against Rheumatism) 2010 criteria was enrolled in this prospective, observational and analytic research study. The CBC (Complete Blood Count), ESR (Erythrocyte sedimentation rate), CRP(C - reactive protein), Anti CCP (Antibodies to cyclic citrullinated peptides), X-ray examination of palms and pelvis, and the activity of the disease as measured by DAS - 28 (28 - joint disease activity score) were carried out in all subjects. Independent samples t-test was used to compare the group’s characteristics, whereas Pearson correlation test was used to analyse the correlation between study variables.RESULTS:Of the total number of the subjects, 730 (76.8 %) were females, whereas 221 (23.2%) were males. The average age was 51.3, y/o while the most of them were between 40 - 49 y/o (32.6%). The prevalence of coxitis was 14.2%, mostly found in males (19.46%). The echosonografic prevalence of changes was 21.45%, while the radiological changes were 16.3%; in both cases, the changes were more expressed in males. The analysis showed that inflammatory parameters were significantly higher in patients with coxitis.CONCLUSION:Coxitis has high economic cost because it ends up with a mandatory need for a total hip joint prosthesis. Thus the results of this study can serve to plan and initiate early preventive measures.

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