Arthritis and rheumatism
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Arthritis and rheumatism · Nov 2008
Severity of baseline magnetic resonance imaging-evident sacroiliitis and HLA-B27 status in early inflammatory back pain predict radiographically evident ankylosing spondylitis at eight years.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is increasingly used to detect sacroiliitis earlier. This study was undertaken to investigate what proportion of patients with MRI-evident sacroiliitis develop ankylosing spondylitis (AS) in the long term and whether there are predictors of outcome. ⋯ Our findings indicate that in patients with early IBP, a combination of severe sacroiliitis and HLA-B27 positivity has a high specificity for development of AS, compared with mild or no sacroiliitis, regardless of HLA-B27 status, which confers a low likelihood of developing AS. This has implications for the diagnosis of "early" AS and possibly for selection of more aggressive therapies.
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Arthritis and rheumatism · Nov 2008
Illness perceptions in patients with fibromyalgia and their relationship to quality of life and catastrophizing.
In the last decade, illness perceptions have been identified as important in the treatment of fibromyalgia (FM). The aim of the present study was to examine illness perceptions and use of the revised Illness Perception Questionnaire in patients with FM (IPQ-R-FM) and their relationship to quality of life and catastrophizing. ⋯ The IPQ-R-FM is a useful tool to assess illness perceptions in patients with FM. Illness perceptions are related to quality of life and catastrophizing; therefore, it seems important to assess and integrate illness perceptions into the management of patients with FM.