Correlation study of serum hyaluronic acid in rheumatoid arthritis patients with disease activity

Abstract EN

Sixty rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients fulfilling ACR criteria, 30 osteoarthritis (OA) patients and 30 healthy controls were included in this study aiming at measuring serum hyaluronic acid (HA) of RA patients as inflammatory arthritis comparing with other non-infiammatory disease (OA) and healthy persons and correlating with disease activity measures, age of the patients, duration of disease and drug therapy of rheumatoid arthritis .

Serum samples were taken at the same time of the day to avoid diurnal variations of HA .

Measurement of HA in the serum was done by protein binding assay ELISA technique.

Results showed that HA concentrations were significantly higher in rheumatoid arthritis patients than controls and OA patients, HA was non significantly increased in OA patients compared to controls.

HA level was significantly correlated to RA disease activity measures and not to duration of disease, age of the patients and drug therapy.

So we can conclude that measurement of HA level is a good and a reliable specific indicator of disease activity ofRA synovitis end better correlate with disease activity rneusures than ESR.