Get Comprehensive Vasculitis Care at Mayo Clinic
The expert rheumatologists at Mayo Clinic’s campus in Jacksonville, Florida, provide you with the latest treatment options and state-of-the-art technologies for vasculitis. Rheumatologists at Mayo Clinic see more than 31,000 patients each year.
Our comprehensive care team is committed to providing you with supportive care and an individualized treatment plan that meets your unique needs.
At our Vasculitis Clinic we offer innovative, effective care for all types of vasculitis, including:
- Polymyalgia Rheumatica
- Giant Cell Arteritis
- Behcet’s Disease
- Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis (Wegener’s Granulomatosis)
- Henoch-Schonlein Purpura (IgA Vasculitis)
- Polyarteritis Nodosa
- Cryoglobulinemic Vasculitis
- Takayasu’s Arteritis
- ANCA Associated Vasculitis
Your Safe Destination for Face-to-Face Care
Nothing is more important than your health and that of your family. We've taken steps to make Mayo Clinic in Florida a safe place for patients to receive care from staff in the COVID-19 environment.
For many patients, access to direct care within Mayo Clinic's safe environment is in your best interest. We have also expanded your options for receiving care. Virtual appointments are now available when appropriate.
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Giant Cell Arteritis & Takayasu's Arteritis
Giant cell arteritis is a form of vasculitis. And vasculitis is a general term. That simply means there's inflammation of blood vessels. And there are a lot of different kinds of vasculitis. This one in particular, the giant cell arteritis, tends to affect large blood vessels. Classic way it's and people above the age of 50 and typically causes what are called cranial symptoms. So mostly headache, tenderness in the scale changes envision and maybe pain in the jaw and tongue with chewing. The most dreaded complication of giant cell arteritis is typically thought to be blindness. And it does major organs typically that would be a cause of death in the short-term. That said, it can affect blood vessels, including large vessels. And we now know that in addition to the cranial symptoms, fair number of patients develop involvement of arteries, the aorta, and large vessels. And involvement of those vessels can be a bad thing. It's been associated with aortic aneurisms and rupture of aortic aneurisms certainly can kill one. The Tukey us whose arteritis is another form of vasculitis that typically affects large blood vessels. Classically the aorta, the major vessels coming off of the aorta. It is sane primarily in younger people. So as opposed to giant cell arteritis where the, we think of it as affecting people over the age of 50, taka Susan, younger people and the age cutoff that's usually used as 40 or under for it, more often affects women than men and has a predilection for Asian populations. Again, with Tukey houses, it's involvement of major vessels that can then cause trouble with the downstream organs. And the ones that we worry about are the, probably the one we worry about the most is the brain with stroke. Other symptoms there can affect the carotid arteries and other major arteries can affect the aorta as well. So for both the primary treatment and steroids is using corticosteroids, prednisolone typically. And it usually needs high doses of prednisolone to control the steroids, the so-called steroid sparing or immune suppressing drugs that we use for rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases don't seem to do much for giant cell arteritis. There have been some studies with Takahashi, who's arteritis to show that methotrexate can be helpful. And in patients who don't respond to methotrexate, some people use the TNF blockers that are also used for rheumatoid arthritis.