Objectives. Our study aimed to compare to what extent the characteristics of patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) differ, depending on the presence / absence of peripheral manifestations of the disease.
Materials and method. We analyzed a batch of 124 patients admitted to the rheumatology clinics of two hospitals, with ankylosing spondylitis according to the modified New York criteria. All individual patient characteristics were documented from patient observation sheets. We divided the population into two groups: the P + group representing the patients with peripheral manifestations of arthritis or enthesitis (N = 56) and the P- group representing the patients without the peripheral manifestations (N = 68). Statistical processing was performed using IBM SPSS and Microsoft Excel.
Results. In the subtype of patients P+ the mean age was 45.14 14.16 years, and in the subtype P- mean age was 43.84 years 12.58 years. Gender distribution of patients in the two subgroups shows higher frequencies for patients without peripheral manifestations P- in both genders, respectively 55.4% in males and 52.2% in females. The highest frequencies were registered at the normal BMI of 18.5-24.9 in both sublots, respectively 51.8% for the P+ patients and 45.6% for the P- patients. The degree of activity of the disease, based on the ASDAS - CRP score, within both P + and P- subgroups, revealed a majority of patients with inactive disease (≤ 1.3). Within the P+ and P- sublots, most patients had the BASDAI index in the range 0-0.9, that is 67.9% of the patients in the P+ sublot and 64.7% of those in the P- sublot, respectively. This shows that the majority of patients in both subgroups had a good therapeutic response to biological treatment, with symptoms such as pain and / or fatigue absent or very low in intensity.
There were no statistically significant differences between the two subgroups.
Conclusion. Even though there were no major paraclinical differences between the patients with pure axial ankylosing spondylitis and patients with AS with peripheral manifestations, the patients with peripheral manifestations of the disease should be approached by a multidisciplinary team.
