relationship between articular and nonarticular manifestations in inflammatory bowel diseases

background: musculoskeletal manifestations (msm) of inflammatory bowel diseases (ibds) are usually the most frequent extraintestinal manifestations. however, they are not paid enough attention during regular office visits. this cross-sectional study aimed to draw a clinical picture of msm and their relationships with other findings in patients with ibd. materials and methods: patients of our ibd cohort between march 2012 and september 2013 were consecutively evaluated. those with current or past history of any msm were examined by a rheumatologist. the outcome of interest was different msms. distribution of ibd manifestations between the two groups of patients with ( n = 20) and without ( n = 253) msm was compared. logistic regression analysis was employed to find the  relationships of demographic, clinical, and laboratory findings with msm. results: two hundred and seventy-three patients were enrolled. forty-two patients (15.4%) had extraintestinal manifestations of which twenty patients (7.5%) had at least one msm. 7/20 patients (35%) versus 22/253 (8.7%) had other  extraintestinal manifestations ( p = 0.0001). 12/20 patients (57%) had arthritis (polyarthritis, 33% and oligoarthritis, 67%). the most frequent involved joints were knee and ankle observed in 8 (40%) and 7 (35%) patients, respectively. the inflammatory back pain was recorded in 5/20 patients (25%) whereas two patients (10%) had ankylosing spondylitis. in regression analysis, oral aphthous (odds ratio [or] =8.8 [95% confidence intervals (ci), 1.7–45], p = 0.009) and other extraintestinal manifestations (or = 5.2 [95% ci, 1.3–20], p = 0.02) were significantly related with arthritis. conclusion: the most frequent extraintestinal manifestations in patients with ibd were msm. knee and ankle were the most frequent involved joints. extraintestinal manifestations were determinant variables of arthritis.