OBJECTIVE To estimate the annual incidence of inflammatory joint diseases in a population based prospective referral study in an adult population in Kronoberg County in southern Sweden. METHODS The patients were referred from primary healthcare centres to the rheumatology department in Växjö Central Hospital or to the one private rheumatologist in Växjö participating in the study. Additionall...

Objective: To estimate the annual incidence of inflammatory joint diseases in a population based prospective referral study in an adult population in Kronoberg County in southern Sweden. Methods: The patients were referred from primary healthcare centres to the rheumatology department in Växjö Central Hospital or to the one private rheumatologist in Växjö participating in the study. Additionall...

OBJECTIVE We aimed to compare the ultrasound findings of patients fulfilling the 1987 ACR [OLD-rheumatoid arthritis (RA)] and the new ACR/EULAR (NEW-RA) classification criteria to examine the impact of the new criteria on disease characteristics, particularly disease duration. MATERIAL AND METHODS A total of 2730 hands, wrists, elbows, knees, ankles, and foot joints of 105 consecutive patient...

Correspondence to Ellen Nordal; [email protected] Disease classification in rheumatology is a matter of debate, in paediatrics between International League Against Rheumatism (ILAR) classification ‘pros and cons’, as well as between paediatric and adult rheumatologists. Indeed, there is no consensus yet about how we should name the disease of adults with juvenile idiopathic arthritis ( JI...

The term undifferentiated connective tissue diseases is used to define conditions characterized by the presence of signs and symptoms suggestive of a systemic autoimmune disease that do not satisfy the classificative criteria for defined connective tissue diseases (CTD) such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), Sjögren's syndrome (SS), rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and others. A small percentage ...

• Disorders of the enthesis are ripe for further clinical, imaging and translational research ‘Enthesitis’ is the term used to describe inflammation at tendon, ligament or joint capsule insertions. It thus applies to disease associated with the spondyloarthritides (SpA) including ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis, reactive arthritis and undifferentiated SpA. The term ‘enthesopathy’, h...

BACKGROUND Antigen-specific lymphocyte proliferation of synovial fluid mononuclear cells (SF MNC) has been reported repeatedly in reactive arthritis and Lyme arthritis; however, less information is available on serial investigations of SF MNC in the same patients. METHODS In this study, the synovial lymphocyte proliferation to Yersinia, Chlamydia, Shigella and Borrelia burgdorferi was investi...

BACKGROUND Leiden Score, is a very useful tool for predicting future development of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), among undifferentiated arthritis (UA) patients. This score has been validated in various western studies but rarely among south east Asian patients. AIMS To validate the Leiden early arthritis prediction rule in an Indian cohort of patients for predicting rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in...