Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0039483 (giant cell arteritis)
 3,204 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

In 1970 a 62-year-old physician with hypertensive vascular disease suffered a small infarction in the left optic disc, which left him with a subtle paracentral temporal visual field defect in that eye. In 1973 he had another separate and distinct episode in the same eye, which produced a dense lower nasal field defect. Careful Hruby lens examination of the disc under high magnification revealed focal arteriolar disease in the optic nerve head corresponding to the field defects, and fluorescein angiography confirmed these findings. The importance of differentiating ischemic optic neuropathy, hypertensive optic neuropathy, and temporal arteritis with optic nerve involvement is emphasized, and the therapy of each is discussed.
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PMID:Hypertensive optic neuropathy. 108 Mar 8

Ischemic optic neuropathy (ION) is the most frequent optic neuropathy in patients older than 50. Anterior ION is classified as nonarteritic, especially in patients with vasculopathic risk factors and/or small optic disc, or arteritic. Monocular visual loss is usually sudden. Typical exam findings are optic nerve swelling and altitudinal visual field defect. Clinical profile, sedimentation rate, and especially fluorescein angiography are very useful to make the distinction between nonarteritic and arteritic ION. Treatment of temporal arteritis with steroids is an emergency but there is no effective therapy of the nonarteritic form.
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PMID:[Acute anterior, ischemic optic neuropathy]. 1182 34

Ischemic optic neuropathies (IONs) are the most frequent acute optic neuropathy in patients older than 50 years. They are classified according to the location of the ischemic damage into anterior ION and posterior ION. Ischemic optic neuropathies may also be categorized based on the presence or absence of temporal arteritis as an underlying etiology. Anterior ION presents with sudden, painless visual loss developing over hours to days. Examination findings usually include decreased visual acuity, a visual field defect, color vision loss, a relative afferent pupillary defect, and a swollen optic nerve head. Posterior ION occurs in arteritic, nonarteritic, and surgical settings. It is characterized by acute vision loss without initial disc edema but with subsequent optic disc atrophy.
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PMID:Ischemic optic neuropathy. 1757 64

It is often difficult to diagnose disease in elderly patients, in particular those with dementia, who do not present with typical symptoms. This report describes our experience of an elderly patient (an 83-year-old woman) who presented with a chief complaint of memory loss, showed a marked inflammatory response, and was diagnosed with large-vessel giant cell arteritis (GCA) on the basis of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) findings. She had no symptoms typical of GCA including jaw claudication, visual field defect and heavy headed feeling. Corticosteroid therapy resulted in a trend toward improvement in the inflammatory response and then she first recognized that she might have experienced slight dull headache before treatment of GCA. This was probably because this patient had large-vessel GCA, which produces a few symptoms in the head and neck, and because she had Alzheimer's disease and could not accurately describe her symptoms. Our experience suggests the usefulness of FDG-PET for the diagnosis of GCA, particularly in elderly patients without typical symptoms.
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PMID:Usefulness of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography for diagnosis of asymptomatic giant cell arteritis in a patient with Alzheimer's disease. 2116 66

Ocular ischemic syndrome, also known as hypoperfusion/ hypotensive retinopathy or as ischemic oculopathy is a rare ocular disease determined by chronic arterial hypoperfusion through central retinal artery, posterior and anterior ciliary arteries. It is bilateral in 20% of the cases. Most often it appears due to severe occlusion of the carotid arteries (ICA, MCA>ECA), described in 1963 by Kearns and Hollenhorst. Occasionally it can be determined by the obstruction of ophtalmic artery or some arterities (Takayasu, giant cell arteritis). The risk factors are: age between 50-80 years, males (M:F = 2:1), arterial hypertension, diabetes, coronary diseases (5% of the cases develop ocular ischemic syndrome), vascular stroke, hemodialysis. The case we present is of an 63 years old man known with primary arterial hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes type 2 non insulin dependent and diagnosticated with ischemic cerebral stroke and bilateral obstruction of internal carotid arteries in march 2010, who is presenting for visual impairment in both eyes. The imaging investigations show important carotid occlusion and at the ophthalmologic evaluation there are ocular hypertension and rubeosis iridis at the right eye, optic atrophy at both eyes (complete in the right eye and partial in the left eye), with superior altitudinal visual field defect in left eye. The following diagnosis was established: Chronic ocular ischemic syndrome in both eyes with Neovascular glaucoma at the right eye, Anterior ischemic optic neuropathy at the left eye and laser panphotocoagulation at the right eye was started.
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PMID:[Ocular ischemic syndrome--a case report]. 2438 88

We report a 55-year-old woman with optic nerve Aspergillosis. Aspergillus is an ubiquitous airborne saprophytic fungus. Inhaled Aspergillus conidia are normally eliminated in the immunocompetent host by innate immune mechanisms; however, in immunosuppressed patients, they can cause disease. The woman had a past medical history of hypertension and migraines. She presented 1 year prior to death with a new onset headache behind the left eye and later developed blurred vision and scotoma. A left temporal artery biopsy was negative for giant cell arteritis. One month prior to the current admission, she had an MRI showing optic nerve thickening with no other findings. Because of the visual loss and a positive antinuclear antibody test, she was given a trial of high dose steroids and while it significantly improved her headache, her vision did not improve. At autopsy, the left optic nerve at the level of the cavernous sinus and extending into the optic chiasm was enlarged in diameter and there was a 1.3 cm firm nodule surrounding the left optic nerve. Histologically, an abscess surrounded and involved the left optic nerve. Acute angle branching, angioinvasive fungal hyphae were identified on Grocott's methenamine silver stained sections, consistent with Aspergillus spp. No gross or microscopic evidence of systemic vasculitis or infection was identified in the body. The literature on optic nerve Aspergillosis is reviewed.
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PMID:Optic nerve aspergillosis. 2586 88

GCA, the most common systemic arteritis, affects medium-sized and larger extradural arteries that have the internal elastic lamina. Involvement of the ophthalmic artery and its branches results in visual loss, which is often complete but is usually painless. Visual loss may be monocular or binocular developing simultaneously or sequentially. Rarely, it stems from occipital lobe infarct that result in homonymous hemianopia, a visual field defect involving the two identical halves (right or left) of the visual fields of both eyes. Visual hallucinations and diplopia are less common. All visual symptoms, including those that are transient, require urgent ophthalmological evaluation and treatment with high-dose glucocorticoids to avoid permanent visual loss.
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PMID:Ophthalmic manifestations of giant cell arteritis. 2998 83

Giant cell arteritis is a large vessel vasculitis with neurological manifestations that range from visual disturbances to ischemic stroke. Among the former, visual acuity and visual field defects are prevalent, with anterior ischemic optic neuropathy being their most frequent cause. We present a clinical case in which the presenting ocular feature of the disease was a peripheral monocular visual field defect secondary to optic perineuritis.
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PMID:Bilateral Optic Perineuritis as Initial Presentation of Giant Cell Arteritis. 3058 31