Rheumatic Disease Awareness Month: Focus on Inflammatory Arthritis
How well does the development of clinical synovitis correlate with initial subclinical inflammation?
Reference1. ten Brinck RM, van Steenbergen HW, van der Helm-van Mil AHM. Development of clinically apparent synovitis: a longitudinal study at the joint level during progression to inflammatory arthritis. RMD Open. 2018;4:e000748. doi: 10.1136/rmdopen-2018-000748.
Ten Brinck and colleagues in the Netherlands found that the majority of small joints in which clinical synovitis developed had no subclinical inflammation at baseline observation.1 Scroll through the slides for the details of the study and the take-home points for physicians.
(Image: ©SebastianKaulitzki/Shutterstock.com)
MRI, magnetic resonance imaging; RA, rheumatoid arthritis.
It is uncommon for patients to progress to inflammatory arthritis when arthralgia is not accompanied by MRI-detected subclinical inflammation.
IA, inflammatory arthritis; MRI, magnetic resonance imaging; RA, rheumatoid arthritis.
ACR, American College of Rheumatology; EULAR, European League Against Rheumatism; MRI, magnetic resonance imaging; RA, rheumatoid arthritis.
ACPA, anti-citrullinated protein antibody.
Inflammatory arthritis represents a systemic process that does not spread outward from individual joints.
