Patients with hidradenitis suppurativa carry a higher systemic inflammatory load than other dermatological patients.

Hidradenitis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease with recurrent nodules, tunnels, scarring and suppuration of intertrigious areas. Hospital-treated HS patients have an increased risk of metabolic syndrome and a wide array of co-morbidities that possibly are related to systemic inflammation. Neutrophile to lymphocyte ratio has been suggested as a marker of systemic inflammation. Studies of psoriasis patients have found their neutrophile to lymphocyte ratio to be increased. In this study, routine blood samples collected during control visits from 50 HS patients are examined, and compared to routine blood samples from 250 age- and sex-matched dermatological outpatients. The neutrophile to lymphocyte ratio does not appear to be increased in HS patients as seen in psoriasis patients, but CRP was found to be higher in HS patients, indicating systemic inflammation. However, N/L ratio was positively correlated to Hurley stage (p < 0.006). The inflammatory biochemical markers for HS patients appear to differ from psoriasis patients and other non-HS dermatological patients; however, a larger study with healthy controls is warranted to further explore the characteristics of inflammatory markers in HS.

Apolipoprotein D is associated with long-term outcome in patients with schizophrenia.

Accumulating evidence implicates deficiencies in apolipoprotein D (ApoD) function and arachidonic acid signaling in schizophrenic disorders. We addressed two hypotheses in relation to ApoD: first, polymorphisms in the ApoD gene confer susceptibility to or are markers of disease, and, second, genetic variation in the ApoD is associated with long-term clinical outcome to antipsychotic treatment. We genotyped two single-nucleotide polymorphisms in the ApoD gene in 343 chronic patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (ICD-10) and 346 control subjects of Danish origin. We did not find ApoD alleles, genotypes or haplotypes to be associated with disease. However, we did find that long-term clinical outcome was associated with the ApoD polymorphism rs7659 (P = 0.041) following adjustment for lifetime clinical global impression, age at first admission and gender.