Bone Densitometry in Rheumatoid Arthritis

Lee, Sang Hoon; Kang, Shin Young; Lee, Jong Seok

Abstract

Rheumatoid arthritis is considered to be a collagen disease which mainly involves articular structures, sometimes has extraarticular manifestations. It is generally accepted now that periarticular osteoporosis develops in early phase of rheumatoid arthritis and generalized osteoporosis in late period. Of several methods of non-invasive measurement of bone mass, single photon absorptiometry was introduced by Cameron and Sorenson(1963) and it has been used for measuring bone mass by many authors with its precision, reproducibility and objective quantification. We tried to observe the quantitative changes of bone mass in rheumatoid arthritis patients with single photon absorptiometry technique. Through the study of bone densitometry in 30 rheumatoid arthritic women compared with age-matched 60 healthy controls, we obtained follow results. 1. Bone mineral density of the rheumatoid arthritis group was lower than that of the control group, but had no significant statistical difference. 2. Bone mineral density of the 40-49-year-old group and 50-59-year-old group was considerablely different in the rheumatoid arthritis group and control group. 3. Bone mineral density of the group whose rheumatoid arthritis history was over 2 year was lower than that of the group below 2 year.