Rheumatic Disease Awareness Month: Focus on Inflammatory Arthritis

Sep 17, 2018

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.