OBJECTIVE To report multiple cases of recurrent seronegative arthropathy, enthesopathy, or both, occurring in a single family in the absence of the HLA-B27 tissue type, coexistent psoriasis or inflammatory bowel disease. METHODS Three generations of one family together with their general practitioners completed a standard questionnaire. All subjects with a positive questionnaire and two rando...

Introduction Gouty spondyloarthropathy is generally believed to be uncommon. Together with the fact that it can mimic a variety of disease entities, it imposes significant diagnostic challenge in our clinical practice. In this article, we report two patients diagnosed with spinal gout, and both were initially suspected to have a pyogenic infection. Case Reports The first patient, a 66-year-ol...

Spondyloarthropathies belong to a group of rheumatic diseases, in which inflammatory changes affect mainly the sacroiliac joints, spine, peripheral joints, tendon, ligaments and capsule attachments (entheses). This group includes 6 entities: ankylosing spondylitis, arthritis associated with inflammatory bowel disease, reactive arthritis, undifferentiated spondyloarthropathy, psoriatic arthritis...

OBJECTIVE Clinical and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data of 170 consecutive patients with inflammatory back pain (IBP) and/or oligoarthritis of the lower limbs were evaluated in a retrospective study. The aim was to determine the frequency of sacroiliitis and spondyloarthropathy (SpA) in this population, and to assess the significance of HLA B27 measurements for diagnosis in early disease. ...

The pathologies of tendon and ligament attachments are called enthesopathies. One of its types is enthesitis which is a characteristic sign of peripheral spondyloarthropathy. Clinical diagnosis of enthesitis is based on rather non-specific clinical signs and results of laboratory tests. Imaging examinations are highly promising. Numerous publications prove that enthesitis can be differentiated ...

BACKGROUND In a pilot study, the anti-tumour necrosis factor alpha monoclonal antibody, infliximab, induced a rapid and significant improvement in global, peripheral, and axial disease manifestations of patients with active spondyloarthropathy. OBJECTIVE To determine whether repeated infusions of infliximab would effectively and safely maintain the observed effect. METHODS Safety and effica...

Chlamydia trachomatis triggers reactive arthritis, a spondyloarthropathy linked to the human major histocompatibility complex molecule HLA-B27, through an unknown mechanism that might involve molecular mimicry between chlamydial and self-derived HLA-B27 ligands. Chlamydia-specific CD8(+) T-cells are found in reactive arthritis patients, but the immunogenic epitopes are unknown. A previous scree...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the outcome of patients with remitting seronegative symmetrical synovitis with pitting oedema (RS3PE). METHODS In a retrospective chart review study, we identified all the patients presenting with polyarthritis and pitting oedema in the past 20 years. We tried to recall the 24 patients with characteristics of RS3PE according to McCarty et al. Two patients had died and fo...

Undifferentiated spondyloarthropathy (USpa) may either represent a forme fruste of other spondyloarthropathies like reactive arthritis or be a different disease entity. To study the link between USpa and reactive arthritis, we studied the presence of IgA antibodies to Yersinia enterocolitica, Salmonella typhimurium, Shigella flexneri, Campylobacter jejuni and Chlamydia trachomatis in sera from ...