Vasculitis

Description:

Vasculitis - an inflammation of blood vessels.  The vasculitis is not a disease,
and it is rather a syndrome which arises at a number of autoimmune diseases of connecting fabric: pseudorheumatism, system lupus erythematosus, etc. The vasculitis can also arise separately, without defeat of connecting fabric.  Process can develop in any blood vessel. Such diseases as Shenleyn-Genokh's syndrome, a knotty erythema, a nodular periarteritis, giant-cell arteritis and Takayasu's arteritis, are characterized by the vasculitis limited to these or those blood vessels: veins, big arteries, small arteries or capillaries, or any certain vessel (vessels), for example vessels of the head, legs or kidneys.

Vasculitis reasons:

Nobody knows that he provokes a vasculitis at most of people, but hepatitis viruses in certain cases play a role. Perhaps, the inflammation arises because the immune system by mistake perceives fabrics of blood vessels as an alien object and attacks them. Cells of immune system which cause an inflammation surround blood vessels and get into their walls, thereby destroying them and damaging the fabrics and bodies supplied by these vessels. Blood supply of nerves and bodies is broken or because vessels are corked, or owing to increase in permeability of walls of blood vessels. Because of insufficient supply with blood in bodies the ischemia centers are formed that can lead to irreversible damage of fabrics.

Vasculitis symptoms:

Manifestations of a vasculitis are not specific. The increased temperature, the general weakness, loss of appetite and body weight, skin rashes, hemorrhages, joint pains, hypostases, a hyperadenosis concern to them. On the current the vasculitis can mask under an infection, autoimmune diseases, neuritis, tumoral processes that complicates its diagnosis.

Diagnosis:

The vasculitis can be primary (an independent disease) and secondary (arising against the background of meningitis, sepsis, psoriasis and other diseases). There is a set of syndromes at which there is an inflammation in walls of arteries of this or that caliber. Besides, the struck area gives the symptomatology. All this complicates diagnosis of system vasculites, as a rule, it is carried out in the specialized centers on the basis of numerous microscopic, immunological, chemical and tool methods of a research.  Diagnostic actions include integrated analyses of blood and urine, a research of vessels (angiography), radiological methods of inspection, a tomography, a biopsy.

Treatment of a vasculitis:

Therapy is appointed proceeding from the specific diagnosis, the vasculitis reason. Anticoagulants, antihistaminic drugs, corticosteroids, vitamin drugs, immunosuppressors, membranostabilizator are often used, use of tsitostatik, a plasmapheresis is possible.