Histopathological features in knee synovitis : comparative study between rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis

Abstract EN

Objective : to compare the histopathologically features of rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis sinusitis of the knee joint and to find out the relation to clinical parameters of both diseases in order to find which histologic variant affecting the clinical course and prognosis of both diseases.

Methodology : Twenty patients were evaluated; ten of them were suffering from RA and the other ten were suffering from idiopathic OA of the knee.

All patients were subjected to complete history taking, thorough clinical examination, radiological, laboratory tests and underwent an arthroscopic biopsy of the synovium of their knee joints.

Five healthy volunteers were included in the study for comparison.

Results : the incidence of palisading of synovial cells and the degree of neo-vascularization were highly significantly higher in RA than in OA patients.

While, the synovial fibrin, hemosiderosis, formation of germinal center, degree of synovial granulation tissue and plasma cells in RA were significantly higher than in OA patients.

The mean of the histopathologically score of RA was significantly higher than mean score in OA.

The mean of the histopathologically score of RA was highly positively correlated to the disease activity score and patient global assessment of the disease activity.

The mean of the histopathologically score of OA was highly positively correlated with the disease duration and was positively correlated with the clinical assessment score, patient age, and X-ray score.

Conclusion : It is important to examine directly the synovial membrane of a joint in an obvious advantage to diagnose and to assess the activity of joint diseases.

Arthroscopic biopsy gives a great valuable mean of gaining useful information for diagnosis and relating the disease activity and its variables to the histopathologically status of the joint.