Vasculitis.

Progress has been made in the classification, characterization, and identification of vasculitis; a heterogeneous disease with various vessel sizes and types of involvement. Understanding pathogenetic mechanisms and the kinetics of the inflammatory-immune response is still in its infancy. With the availability of new tools for diagnosis and the use of molecular biological techniques at the cellular, tissue, and fluid phase levels will open the doors for new understanding of the etiology and mechanism(s) of this group of diseases.