Axial spondyloarthritis: time to stop the split 10 years on

Epidemiology of axial spondyloarthritis

The Nonradiographic Axial Spondyloarthritis, the Radiographic Axial Spondyloarthritis, and Ankylosing Spondylitis: The Tangled Skein of Rheumatology

Since 1984 the diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) has been based upon the modified New York (mNY) criteria with mandatory presence of radiographic sacroiliitis, without which the diagnosis is not tenable. However, it may take years or decades for radiographic sacroiliitis to develop delaying the diagnosis for long periods. It did not matter in the past because no effective treatment was a...

How to diagnose axial spondyloarthritis early.

BACKGROUND Chronic low back pain (LBP), the leading symptom of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and undifferentiated axial spondyloarthritis (SpA), precedes the development of radiographic sacroiliitis, sometimes by many years. OBJECTIVE To assign disease probabilities and to develop an algorithm to help in the early diagnosis of axial SpA. METHODS Axial SpA comprises AS and undifferentiated SpA...

NSAIDs in axial spondyloarthritis: to be continued…?

Phenylbutazone was discovered in 1946 and promptly exhibited efficacy in various rheumatic diseases in the early 1950s. Its efficacy on pain and general well-being was especially present in ankylosing spondylitis (AS), which was then known as ‘rheumatoid spondylitis’. 2 However, even in the early days, non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) were not considered harmless drugs, as the toxi...

Axial Spondyloarthritis and Cigarette Smoking

BACKGROUND Smoking is one of the main environmental risk factors involved in several rheumatic diseases according to ACR 2014, it is included among the risk factors for severe axial spondyloarthritis. OBJECTIVES The objective is to study the association between smoking and the activity of the disease, the functional impact and the severity of the axial spondyloarthritis. METHODS It is a tra...