Aims: ultrasound (US) diagnosis of enthesitis is burdened of low specificity, especially when it is performed in patients with psoriasis (PsO) but without clinical psoriatic arthritis (PsA), because of mechanical, dysmetabolic and age-related concurrent enthesopatic changes. We propose a novel US score to quantify the cortical-entheseal bone remodeling burden of several peripheral entheses, aiming to improve the specificity of US for PsA-related enthesitis, and to evaluate its diagnostic value in PsO patients with subsequent diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis (PsO/PsA).
Methods: clinical and US data of 119 consecutive patients with moderate/severe PsO and nonspecific musculoskeletal symptoms, were included in this retrospective study.
Progressive pulmonary fibrosis (PPF) has been associated with a worse prognosis, even when interstitial lung disease (ILD) is related to rheumatic diseases. Since many differences are detectable among rheumatic diseases in prevalence and features of ILD, we aimed to investigate features of PPF in different rheumatic diseases, namely rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and primary Sjogren's syndrome (pSS). In an Italian multicentre cross-sectional study, consecutive pSS or RA patients with a diagnosis of ILD from at least two years were enrolled.
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