Marcus Both

TL;DR: B lymphocyte depletion was not associated with a change of the ANCA titres or obvious clinical improvement of refractory granulomatous disease in patients with WG in this pilot study.

TL;DR: There is evidence that locWG is a long-term disease stage or phenotype (5% of all patients with WG), 46% of whom are ANCA-positive, which is characterised by destructive and/or space-consuming lesions associated with high relapse rates and local damage.

TL;DR: New developments and future perspectives such as motion-compensated imaging with self-navigated sequences or fast Fourier decomposition MRI for non-contrast enhanced ventilation- and perfusion-weighted imaging of the lung are discussed.

TL;DR: MR imaging of superficial cranial arteries is accurate in the initial diagnosis of GCA giant cell arteritis and sensitivity probably decreases after more than 5 days of sCS systemic corticosteroid therapy; thus, imaging should not be delayed.

TL;DR: MRI and PET are unreliable for assessing large-vessel inflammation in patients with giant cell arteritis and pre-existing immunosuppressive therapy, while MRI is valuable for its ability to detect morphological vessel lesions, such as aneurysms and stenoses.