Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Journal of Turkish Society For Rheumatology, cilt.15, sa.1, ss.6-13, 2023 (Scopus)
Objective: Undifferentiated arthritis (UA) is diagnosed after excluding other arthritis-related diseases. Current data generally focuses on the early forms of UA, and knowledge about persistent UA (pUA) is insufficient. Therefore, we investigated the general characteristics of patients with pUA in this study. Methods: The study included patients with persistent peripheral arthritis of undetermined etiology lasting longer than six months. Medical records were reviewed retrospectively. Patients having an arthritis-associated diagnosis were excluded. Arthritis was verified by magnetic resonance imaging. The disease activity was evaluated with a visual analog scale. Results: We totally analyzed 60 patients with a mean age of 49.7 years and 76.7% of them were female. The mean disease duration was 78 months, and 21.6% of them had a family history of rheumatic diseases. The most common clinical pattern was knee monoarthritis (56.6%), the number of affected joints was two at most, and the frequency of erosive arthritis was 35%. Among all variables, only metatarsophalangeal joint involvement was significantly higher in patients with erosive arthritis (p=0.046). 98% of patients achieved remission with disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs). Conclusion: Our research shows that pUA shares several characteristics with other rheumatic diseases such as the family history of rheumatic disease, good response to DMARDs, and chronic course. We found that the cases with pUA show mono/oligoarticular involvement as spondyloarthritis; female gender predominance, and (sometimes) erosive course as rheumatoid arthritis. A long lag time is a major problem, and the prognosis of pUA is generally benign. Further studies are needed for a better definition of this clinical entity.