OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to investigate the role of periodontal pathogens in RA in remission. METHODS Twenty-one patients with active RA and 70 patients in clinical remission, including 48 patients with synovitis [US power Doppler (USPD)(+) group] and 22 patients without synovitis [USPD(-) group] were clinically assessed by US. CRP, ESR, haemoglobin, MMP-3, RF and ACPA were m...

Objective: To compare the clinical assessment of overall inflammatory activity in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) with grey scale and power Doppler (PD) ultrasonography (US). Methods: Ninety four consecutive patients with RA were included. Demographic and clinical data, C reactive protein (CRP) level, and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) were recorded for each patient. The presence ...

Objectives Ultrasonography (US) is a fast, available and low-cost imaging tool used for detecting knee synovitis. Our aims were to assess the relationship between US and histology findings in appraising levels of inflammation and vascularity in the knee joint in subjects with inflammatory arthropathies; to determine whether differences exist in the appraisal between varying knee compartments an...

Degenerative osteoarthritis is a cause of joint pain common in the elderly. The knee joint is often affected and minor trauma may produce an exacerbation of symptoms. In a proportion of such patients painful symptoms are accompanied by synovitis and swelling of the joint. A clinical syndrome of acute synovitis of large joints, occurring in elderly persons, has been described by McCarty, Kohn an...

OBJECTIVE To examine the relation between the serum levels of tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNFalpha), soluble tumour necrosis factor receptors (sTNF-R), and the histological pattern of rheumatoid synovitis. METHODS An enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to measure TNFalpha, p55 sTNF-R, and p75 sTNF-R concentrations in the serum of 43 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the modified US7 score (MUS7 score SYN) in the assessment of patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (ERA). In addition, dorsal and palmar recesses of the wrists as well as of small joints of the hands and feet were examined for the presence of synovitis by means of a global assessment of joints. METHODS The study sample comprised 32 patients treated for arthritis, with...

Synovitis is an inflammatory process associated with pain, disability, and discomfort, which is usually treated with anti-inflammatory drugs or biological agents. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been also successfully used in the treatment of inflammatory-related diseases such as synovitis or arthritis. In the last years, the exosomes derived from MSCs have become a promising tool for the tr...

OBJECTIVE Musculoskeletal US is being increasingly used for the assessment of synovitis, although questions remain about its reliability. One potential factor affecting reliability is the lack of consensus of image acquisition methods such as using different joint positions. This may have an implication on the reproducibility of studies that use US as an outcome measure. The aim of this study w...

Chronic synovitis is a rare complication of sarcoidosis, virtually confined to the black population. Synovial histology may be nonspecific or show typical sarcoid granulomata. We report 2 cases of chronic sarcoid synovitis in Caucasians. Histology showed typical granulomata in one patient, whose distinctive arthroscopic appearance is discussed.