Meta-analysts on relationship between mycoplasma infection and rheumatoid arthritis / 中华风湿病学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To systematically review the relationship between mycoplasma infection and rheumatoid arthritis (RA).Methods Articles on case-control studies about the relation between mycoplasma infection and RA were collected by literature searching according to the selection criteria.Meta-analyses were performed for the included studies using RevMan 4.3.2 software.The odds ratio (OR) and its corresponding 95％ confidence interval (95％CI) were calculated by Meta-analysis.Results Seventeen casecontrol studies involving 729 RA patients and 1191non-RA controls,such as osteoarthritis (OA),reactive arthritis (ReA),gouty arthritis (GA),healthy controls were included.The results of Meta-analyses showed that there was a significant difference in the infection ratio of mycoplasma between patients with RA and non-RA (OR=4.40,95％CI 2.26 to 8.56,P＜0.01),and sensitivity analysis according to different published date and detection methods showed no difference.There were also significant differences between RA patients and OA patients (OR=11.29,95％CI 5.55 to 22.97,P＜0.01) and healthy controls (OR=6.80,95％CI 3.96 to 11.67,P＜0.01).Conclusion Mycoplasma infection is associated with RA.More evidence are needed to prove whether mycoplasma has played an equal role in RA and ReA,as well as the significant difference of mycoplasma infection between RA and GA groups.