Study: MRIs May Aid in Planning Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which gives doctors more detailed images than X-rays. may help doctors make an early determinaton as to which patients will have a form of rheumatoid arthritis that needs aggressive treatment, according to New Zealand researchers.

Reporting in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism, researchers said they found that patients who had bone swelling at the start of a six-year study were more than six times more likely to have serious joint damage by the study's end.

"MRI is proving to be a useful tool with which to investigate disease processes in rheumatoid arthritis," said researcher Dr. Fiona McQueen of Auckland Hospital.

In their study, 42 people in the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis had an MRI and an X-ray of the wrist in their dominant hand. The tests were repeated at one year and at six years, at which point only 31 original participants were still able to participate.

The rheumatoid arthritis patients who showed signs of bone swelling in the first MRI were the most likely to have developed bone erosion by the end of the study, the researchers reported.

MRIs also were more effective at picking up bone erosion than X-rays, the researchers reported, showing bone erosion at the start of the study in 45 percent of the participants, compared to only 15 percent found by X-rays.

"MRI scans of the dominant wrist are useful in predicting erosions in early rheumatoid arthritis and may indicate the patients that should be managed aggressively," McQueen concluded..

Other sources: Arthritis and Rheumatism