Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Paraneoplastic syndrome identified thanks to professor Carlo Salvarani’s study published on Neurology

Neurology , the important scientific magazine of the American Academy of Neurology, has published a study on Primary central nervous system vasculitis associated with lymphoma, which identifies and characterises a new paraneoplastic syndrome. The study was carried out by Carlo Salvarani, professor at Unimore and pincipal investigator at the US Mayo Clinic.

The multidisciplinary study of the Mayo Clinic, an international reference institution in the medical field and of rheumatic pathologies in particular, where professor Salvarani was recently called to take over the role of Edward W. Boland Rheumatology Named Visiting Professorship, describes and typifies a new neurologic paraneoplastic syndrome featuring a cerebral vasculitis that occurs and is diagnosed simultaneously with lymphoma (mainly the Hodgkin lymphoma), therefore suggesting that vasculitis outbreak is initially caused by a paraneoplastic immunologic mechanism. 

This paraneoplastic disorder was identified and characterised by assessing the medical history of some 1000 patients with any type of vasculitis and lymphoma, monitored at the Mayo Clinic over 32 years, and comparing the patients suffering from isolated cerebral vasculitis and lymphoma with those suffering from isolated cerebral vasculitis without lymphoma, identified at Mayo Clinic over a 29-year period.

“As a consequence of a mechanism that is not yet clear to researchers, the tumour “triggers” an immunologic reaction in some patients, possibly activated by antigens shared between the cancer and the brain, which determines a cerebral vasculitis”, professor Carlo Salvarani explains. The treatment of the tumour is therefore the treatment of vasculitis, too. This article provides an important medical message: being able to recognise such new paraneoplastic syndrome is extremely important as finding and treating the underlying lymphoma may heal vasculitis”.

Carlo Salvarani

Born in Reggio Emilia in 1954, he graduated in Medicine in Parma in 1980, where he also specialised in Internal Medicine, and then he specialised in Rheumatology in Ferrara. He is a professor at Unimore, and also Director of the Complex Structure of Rheumatology of the Local Health Unit and Scientific Hospitals Office in Reggio Emilia, and of the same institution of the University - Hospital Polyclinic of Modena.  A member of the European Vasculitis Society (EUVAS), of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and of various other national and international rheumatology groups, he is the author of 468 publications on the most prestigious magazines of rheumatology, internal and genetic medicine, some of them with a high IF such as Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Nature Genetics. He has written 5 review articles by invitation (of which 4 as first name) on Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine. His H-index is 71. He was a member of the Editorial Board of some of the most important magazines of rheumatology such as Arthritis Care and Research, Current Opinion in Rheumatology, Rheumatic & Musculoskeletal Diseases (Open EULAR journal), Clinical and Experimental Rheumatology, and Expert Review of Clinical Immunology. Since 1993, professor Salvarani has been collaborating as “Visiting Clinician” with the Rheumatology and Neurology Departments of the prestigious Mayo Clinic where he is principal investigator of research projects on vasculitis. Two of these projects, on giant cell arteritis/polymyalgia rheumatica and isolated vasculitis of the central nervous system respectively, boast an excellent reputation among the international scientific community, as they have defined the clinical spectrum and the therapy of such conditions.

References:

Primary central nervous system vasculitis associated with lymphoma,

Carlo Salvarani, MD, Robert D. Brown Jr, MD, MPH, Teresa J.H. Christianson, BS, John Huston III, MD, Stephen M. Ansell, MD, Caterina Giannini, MD, and Gene G. Hunder, MD

Neurology® February 2, 2018

Categorie: International - english