Author Archives: Magdalena Kegel

A large proportion of sarcoidosis patients live with severe chronic pain despite the heavy use of painkillers, including opioids, a recent survey found. In addition, pain considerably impacts their walking ability, sleep, and enjoyment of life. Based on the survey results, researchers argue that the nerve damage that causes…

aTyr Pharma has dosed the first person in its Phase 1 study of iMod.Fc (ATYR1923) — an investigational therapy developed for patients with interstitial lung diseases, including sarcoidosis. The study is the first to test the compound in humans and will compare the treatment to a placebo in healthy…

Treatment with medications for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) do not significantly help people with sarcoidosis-associated pulmonary hypertension (PH), researchers from France’s University of Paris-Sud reported. Their study, “Management and long-term outcomes of sarcoidosis-associated pulmonary hypertension,” — published in the European Respiratory Journal — showed that while PAH-drugs improved some disease…

Patients with suspected cardiac sarcoidosis should be monitored for potential sarcoidosis lesions in other organs besides the heart, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), who found that 40% of examined patients had sarcoidosis in other areas of the body. The study, “FDG PET-CT…

Researchers found bacteria of the type Propionibacterium acnes in a large proportion of tissue samples from patients with cardiac sarcoidosis, suggesting that the bacteria may cause the formation of granulomas (abnormal collections of inflammatory cells), a typical feature of sarcoidosis. The work, published in the journal PLOS ONE, indicated that…

Sarcoidosis may appear in cancer patients who respond well to treatment with dendritic cell-based vaccines, according to a case series report from Germany. At the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg and the associated Erlangen University Hospital, researchers noted three patients with malignant melanoma who developed sarcoidosis after or during such treatment.

A rare case report of a woman with sarcoidosis in the liver and spleen, who developed signs of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) during recovery, illustrates that sarcoidosis can occur in less than typical ways. The study by researchers at the University of Bari Aldo Moro in Italy, titled “A…

Increased levels of a specific type of T-cell in some patients with melanoma might explain the connection between the cancer and sarcoidosis, researchers suggest in a study that explored melanoma patients treated with immunotherapy. The study, “Immunotherapy-induced sarcoidosis in patients with melanoma treated with PD-1 checkpoint inhibitors: Case series and…

Cell-based therapies for a variety of lung diseases can be considered safe, according to an analysis that pooled data from all available clinical trials of stem cell therapies. Although death rates were lower in treated patients compared to controls, findings did not indicate any statistically significant differences in either the…

An analysis of the usefulness of chest X-ray screening for sarcoidosis among patients with a certain type of eye inflammation (uveitis) failed to answer the question of whether it might be better to omit X-ray screening from initial evaluations in favor of more sensitive imaging techniques. Researchers stated that this failure…