Increased Enthesopathy in Patients With Familial Mediterranean Fever

Abstract

This study showed significant enthesopathy in patients with familial Mediterranean fever. The findings support the hypothesis that familial Mediterranean fever and spondyloarthropathy may have common inflammatory mechanisms and suggest that the MASEI scoring system can be incorporated into clinical protocols for studying patients with familial Mediterranean fever in daily practice.

Sonoelastographic Assessment of the Achilles Tendon in Familial Mediterranean Fever Patients: Comparison With Healthy Subjects

“…The link between tendinopathy and FMF has been a debate. Some studies concluded that there is a link between enthesopathy and FMF [2,3,5]. The most striking finding of our study was no statistically significant difference was reached in terms of tendon thickness or SE grading of Achilles tendon enthesopathy.…”

“…On the other hand, no difference was observed between patients' and controls' MASEI scores and disease duration or colchicine treatment duration. Additionally, no difference was observed between the MASEI score and the presence or absence of arthritic involvement among the patients [5].…”

“…FMF is one of the foremost reasons for secondary amyloidosis, which continues to be a major cause of systemic amyloidosis. Amyloid deposition may cause synovitis and inflammation [5]. It is a genetically transmitted rheumatic disease also characterized by recurrent abdominal pain, fever, joint pain and swelling attacks [2].…”

Presence of enthesopathy demonstrated with ultrasonography in systemic sclerosis

“…In literature, in addition to SpA, enthesitis was investigated only in few diseases including Behçet's disease [24,25], familial Mediterranean fever [26,27], Sjögren syndrome [28], dialysis patients [29], fibromyalgia [30,31], psoriasis [9,32], inflammatory bowel disease without spondyloarthritis symptoms [33] by using US. Although musculoskeletal involvement in SSc was investigated in a few studies by using US [34][35][36] with SSc by using MRI [7].…”

Familial Mediterranean fever: What associations to screen for?

“…This association is reinforced by the particular frequency of enthesopathies in subjects with FMF [ 12 ] suggesting that the mutant MEFV gene could partially promote such an association [ 11 , 13 ].…”