Lorena Rodríguez Martínez

• Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de Santiago

Purpose Adalimumab (ADA) is a systemic biological treatment option approved for the treatment of noninfectious uveitis (NIU); however, up to 40% of patients do not respond to the drug, either in a primary or secondary manner. Here, we evaluated the proteomic profile of patients with NIU who fail to ADA to identify proteins implicated in intraocular...

Cysteamine, an aminothiol, is the only available treatment for cystinosis, an incurable metabolic recessive disease characterized by detrimental symptoms at the renal, ocular, and muscular levels. Cystinosis is due to mutations in the CTNS gene encoding for the lysosomal symporter cystinosine. Cysteamine treatment only delays the symptoms, presents...

The endothelial glycocalyx, lining the apical surface of the endothelium, is involved in a host of vascular processes. The layer contains a network of membrane-bound proteoglycans and glycoproteins. One such glycoprotein is endomucin (EMCN), which our lab has revealed is a modulator of VEGFR2 function. Intravitreal injection of siEMCN into the eyes...

Background and Importance Therapeutic drug monitoring in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a useful tool for optimising biologic therapy. The analysis of adalimumab (ADL) concentrations in blood through enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) requires accumulation of samples to make it a cost-efficient technique, delaying the results for severa...

The introduction of point-of-care (POC) assays into clinical practice in patients with inflammatory disease enables on-demand therapeutic decision making. The aim of this study was to compare the POC test Quantum blue (Bühlmann Laboratories) for infliximab (IFX), adalimumab (ADL), and its anti-drug antibodies with the traditional ELISA assay (Promo...

Background Autoantibodies are critical elements in RA pathogenesis and clinical assessment. The anti-malondialdehyde-acetaldehyde (anti-MAA) antibodies are potentially useful because of their claimed high sensitivity for all RA patients, including those lacking RF and anti-CCP antibodies. Therefore, we aimed to replicate these findings. Methods We...

Outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) with continuous infusion pumps is postulated as a very promising solution to treat complicated infections, such as endocarditis or osteomyelitis, that require patients to stay in hospital during extended periods of time, thus reducing their quality of life and increasing the risk of complications....

Biological drugs, especially those targeting anti-tumour necrosis factor α (TNFα) molecule, have revolutionized the treatment of patients with non-infectious uveitis (NIU), a sight-threatening condition characterized by ocular inflammation that can lead to severe vision threatening and blindness. Adalimumab (ADA) and infliximab (IFX), the most wide...

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a common ocular disease characterized by degeneration of the central area of the retina in the elderly population. Progression and response to treatment are influenced by genetic and non-genetic factors. Proteomics is a powerful tool to study, at the molecular level, the mechanisms underlying the progressio...

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a common ocular disease characterized by the de-generation of the central area of the retina in elderly population. Progression and response to treatment is influenced by genetic and non-genetic factors. Proteomics is a powerful tool to study, at the molecular level, the mechanisms underlaying the progressi...

Cystinosis is a rare genetic disorder characterized by the accumulation of cystine crystals in different tissues and organs causing, among other symptoms, severe ocular manifestations. Cysteamine eye drops are prepared in hospital pharmacy departments to facilitate access to treatment, for which vehicles that provide adequate biopermanence, as well...

In the last decades, personalized medicine has been increasing its presence in different fields of medicine, including ophthalmology. A new factor that can help us direct medicine towards the challenge of personalized treatments is the microbiome. The gut microbiome plays an important role in controlling immune response, and dysbiosis has been asso...

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) show autoantibodies against post-translational protein modifications (PTMs), such as anti-citrullinated protein antibodies. However, the range of recognized PTMs is unknown. Here, we addressed four PTMs: chlorination, non-enzymatic glycation, nitration, and homocysteinylation, identified as targets of atypica...

Tenascin-C, an extracellular matrix protein that has proinflammatory properties, is a recently described antibody target in rheumatoid arthritis. In this study, we utilized a systematic discovery process and identified five novel citrullinated tenascin-C (cit-TNC) T cell epitopes. CD4+ T cells specific for these epitopes were elevated in the periph...

The presence of rheumatoid factor (RF) or anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (anti-CCP) autoantibodies contributes to the current rheumatoid arthritis (RA) classification criteria. These criteria involve stratification on antibody levels, which limits reproducibility, and underperform in the RA patients without RF and anti-CCP. Here, we have explore...

Background Autoantibodies to some post-translational modifications (PTMs) of proteins have a relevant role in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Antibodies to other PMTs such as carbonylation (aCarbo) [1], nitration (aNitra) [2] and homocysteinylation (aHCis) [3] have also been described but they have been scarcely studied. Objectives We aimed to evaluate...

Background Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) presents high levels of oxidative stress and reactive species such as malondialdehyde, which modifies proteins forming malondialdehyde adducts (MaP) and, in the presence of acetaldehyde generates adducts called malondialdehyde-acetaldehyde (MaaP). Recently, the presence of malondialdehyde modified proteins in th...

Objectives: TLR3 mediates skin solar injury by binding nuclear material released from apoptotic keratinocytes, resulting in the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Because the TLR3 gene is located in 4q35, a known systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) susceptibility locus, we wondered whether TLR3 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were ass...

Background: The patients with RA benefit from early identification soon after the first clinical symptoms appear. The 2010 ACR/EULAR classification criteria were developed to fulfill this need and their application has been demonstrated to be effective. However, there is still room for improvement. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the potential of...

Background Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) achieve the best response when they receive adequate treatment as soon as possible. This fact motivated the modification of the classification criteria by the ACR and the EULAR in 2010 to enable early detection. One of the changes is the increased weight conferred to the autoantibodies: rheumatoid...

Background Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) present increased oxidative stress that leads to lipid peroxidation and the formation of malondialdehyde (MDA) and acetaldehyde (AA). These two compounds under oxidative stress form malondialdehyde-acetaldehyde (MAA) adducts with proteins, which are highly immunogenic. Recently, Thiele et al.¹ desc...

Background The anti-CCP assay identifies antibodies against endogenous citrullinated proteins that are not completely characterized. The histone H4 seems to be a prominent one according to a recent study (1), which found this protein specifically in the immune complexes from synovial fluid of anti-CCP positive RA patients. Only vimentin, among the...