LAUSR

Background Ankylosing spondylitis (AS), a chronic rheumatic disease affecting young adults, is the prototype of the seronegative spondyloarthropathies (SpA). Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has an established role in the diagnosis and monitoring of patients with axial spondyloarthropaties (axSpA). Changes in MRI have shown some correlation with changes in clinical disease activity scores in the setting of biologic trials. MRI of the sacroiliac joints (SIJ) is currently widely used to assess inflammatory activity in AS patients. In general, agreement of status scores was somewhat better than agreement of change scores, and agreement of the comprehensiveSpondyloarthritis Research Consortium of Canada scoring system (SPARCC) was somewhat better than agreement of the more condensed systems. Objectives The aim of this study is to evaluate the correlation between clinical disease activity of axSpA and MRI findings of sacroiliac joints. Methods Patients who were diagnosed as axSpA according to the Assessment of SpondyloArthritis international Society(ASAS) classification criteria in the our outpatient clinic and followed up routinely between November 2015 and August 2017 were included in this study. 32 patients between 18 and 55 years of age had been referred for routine blood tests and sacroiliac MRI. In this cross-sectional study, VAS, BASDAI, MASES, BASFI, ASDAS-ESR, ASDAS-CRP, ESR and CRP were used as the indicators of clinical activity. MRI of the sacroiliac joint was performed and the SPARCC score was evaluated by a radiologist who was blind to the clinical and laboratory parameters of the patients. Results The mean age of the patients was 39.3±9.2. 11 of the patients participating in the study were female (34.4%), 21 were male (65.6%). The mean duration of symptom onset was 9.3±7.7 years and the mean duration of diagnosis was 3.6±2.8 years. HLA-B27 is positive in 16 patients (%50). There is no correlation between SPARCC score and VAS, BASDAI, MASES, BASFI, ASDAS-CRP, ASDAS-ESR, ESR, CRP values (p>0.05). In the HLA-B27 subgroup analyses, a statistically significant correlation was found between HLA-B27 negative patients and SPARCC score (p=0.008). Conclusions As a result of this study, we could not find any relationship between other clinical disease parameters and sacroiliac joint imaging findings except for SPARCC score relationship with BASDAI in HLA-B27 negative patients with axSpA. We think that this relationship can be better revealed in future studies. References [1] Zhang P, Yu K, Guo R, Shah S, Morelli JN, Runge VA, Li X.Ankylosing spondylitis: correlations between clinical and MRI indices of sacroiliitis activity.Clin Radiol. 2015Jan;70(1):62–6. doi: 10.1016/j.crad.2014.09.015. Epub 2014 Oct 22. [2] MacKay JW, Aboelmagd S, Gaffney JK.Correlation between clinical and MRI disease activity scores in axial spondyloarthritis.Clin Rheumatol. 2015Sep;34(9):1633–8. doi: 10.1007/s10067–015–2936–8. Epub 2015 Apr 19. [3] Landewé RB, Hermann KG, van der Heijde DM, Baraliakos X, Jurik AG, Lambert RG, Østergaard M, Rudwaleit M, Salonen DC, Braun J. Scoring sacroiliac joints by magnetic resonance imaging. A multiple-reader reliability experiment.J Rheumatol. 2005Oct;32(10):2050–5. Disclosure of Interest None declared