Urinary Cartilaps Concentration In Rheumatoid Arthritis

Objective: To evaluate the role of urinary Cartilaps in disease activity of rheumatoid arthritis, and to assess the urinary CartiLaps as markers of collagen typeâ…¡degradation in rheumatoid arthritis.Methods: 59 patients, in which 42 patients with active rheumatoid arthritis and 17 patients with remissive rheumatoid arthritis were admitted in our hospital from june 2005 to march 2006. They were divided into two groups according to disease activity. In this study,21 osteoarthritis are also included. 22 volunters as controls were enrolled too. Disease activity evaluating indices were collected according to the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) core set of disease activity measures. Plain X-rays of hands,wrists,and feet of patients with RA were taken.The X-rays were scored according to Larsen.Urinary CTX-â…¡was measured by a competitive ELISA(Cartilaps,Nordic Bioscience).Results: The urinary levels of CartiLaps in the active RA group were significantly elevated compared with the levels in remissive RA, osteoarthritis group ,and healthy controls (p<0.05,p<0.05,and p<0.01 respectively). Osteoarthritis patients had a higher urinary Cartilaps concentration than healthy controls, but there was no significant diffrence (p>0.05). There was significant correlation between collagen typeâ…¡C-telopeptide fragments as measured in CartiLaps assay and physician's global assessment to disease activity(p<0.05). The CartiLaps measurements did not correlate with disease duration, morning stiffness, disease activity score(DAS),Ritchie articular index, number of swollen joints , patient's assessment of pain, patient's global assessment to disease activity ,Visual analogue scale (VAS) pain, Health Assessment Questionnaire scores(HAQ) , RF-IgG,RF-IgA,RF-IgA , or with markers of inflammation among the RA patients such as...