Is ultrasonography superior to clinical examination in the detection and localization of knee joint effusion in rheumatoid arthritis?
US is more sensitive than CE in the detection of suprapatellar bursitis, knee effusion, and Baker's cyst in RA. CE underestimates knee inflammation in RA. This has implications for the use of CE as a component of standardized disease activity scores and in guiding knee joint aspiration.
In patients with active RA, the spot urinary concentrations of NTx and Pyrilinks-D correlated positively with serum AA2-microglobulin. Therefore, the estimations of these urinary markers may take the place of serum ss2-microglobulin estimation in monitoring the patientA centAAs response to treatment in rheumatoid arthritis.