Abstract

URIBE, Liliana et al. Correlation between clinical activity measured by DAS-28 and ultrasound in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Rev.Colomb.Reumatol. [online]. 2016, vol.23, n.3, pp.159-169. ISSN 0121-8123.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rcreu.2016.05.002.

Introduction: Rheumatoid arthritis is a multifactorial, systemic, chronic, autoimmune, and inflammatory disease that mainly affects the joints. Ultrasound has shown to be useful in detecting subclinical synovitis; however, most of the available evidence is in patients on remission, and the evidence on a correlation with the clinical activity measured by DAS-28, in our midst, is limited. Objective: To establish the correlation between clinical activity measured by DAS-28 and ultrasound in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Materials and methods: A total of 40 patients diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis who were started on biological therapy or leflunomide were included in the descriptive, longitudinal, prospective study to evaluate the correlation between DAS-28 and ultrasound at baseline visit and 4 months later. Results: A correlation was found between DAS-28 and ultrasound, both by using the grayscale (r = 0.943, p <.01) and the power Doppler (r = 0.946, p <.01). There was also a correlation between the ultrasound DAS by grayscale and ultrasound DAS by power Doppler (r = 0.953, p<.01). Conclusions: Ultrasound is a useful tool for detecting sub-clinical inflammation and the results are conclusive when comparing the number of swollen joints in the clinical evaluation with the count obtained in the ultrasound assessment. Ultrasound evaluation suggests that the hands are the joints with better performance for measuring the grade of synovitis in rheumatoid arthritis.

Keywords : Rheumatoid arthritis; Ultrasound; Synovial hypertrophy; Power Doppler.

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