Assessment of inflammatory joint activity in rheumatoid arthritis and changes in atmospheric conditions.

Seventy-nine patients suffering from rheumatoid factor positive rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were included in this study. In each patient disease activity was assessed three times at two-week intervals during a four-week period. All factors that might possibly influence RA, except atmospheric conditions (AC) were held constant as far as possible. Current AC parameters were obtained from the local observatory of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute. There were no relevant correlations between AC and RA variables. Also relations between changes in AC variables preceding the disease activity assessment or between changes in AC variables and RA variables were not seen. By means of factor analysis, uncorrelated factors pertaining to RA or to weather were extracted. No clear association between any of the AC variables and any of the RA variables was noted. Our results do not support the widely accepted, but insufficiently documented, influence of weather on RA.

Thrombocytopenia associated with gold therapy: a drug-induced autoimmune disease?

We studied 13 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and gold-induced thrombocytopenia. Platelet-specific autoantibodies of the IgG and often also of the IgM class were detected by immunofluorescence on the patient's platelets and in ether eluates from these platelets. In nine patients we also detected autoantibodies in the serum. The antibodies were unreactive with platelets from patients with Glanzmann's disease in most cases, and were not EDTA dependent. Thus, they had the serological characteristics of true autoantibodies. The reaction of the antibodies with platelets was not influenced by the addition of extra gold. By atomic absorption spectrophotometry we found that the ether eluates, which were often strongly reactive with donor platelets, were free of gold. This indicated that the autoantibodies in the thrombocytopenic patients were not dependent on gold for their reaction. The possibility is raised that gold treatment of rheumatoid arthritis patients induces or enhances the formation of platelet-specific autoantibodies, and that gold-induced thrombocytopenia is a drug-induced autoimmune disease.

Sexual problems in rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis.

In this study, scores on the sexual motivation scale (which measures the tendency to engage in sexual interaction versus the tendency to be averse to sexual interaction) were determined, by interview, in ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients and compared with the scores of healthy matched controls. AS patients did not score differently from the healthy population, but scores of men and women with RA were more in the direction of sexual aversion than those of healthy men and women. In female RA patients, some relationship was found between disease variables such as joint index and erythrocyte sedimentation rate and the score on the sexual motivation scale. In the second part of the interview, preference for certain coital positions was investigated, and the demand for help with sexual problems was explored. The percentage of RA patients expressing a need for advice was considerably greater than the percentage of AS patients.

Sthenia, ambition and educational level in patients suffering from ankylosing spondylitis: a controlled study of personality features as compared to rheumatoid arthritis and unspecified low back pain.

As compared to control-groups of rheumatoid arthritis and chronic non-inflammatory low back pain, over a hundred polyclinical patients suffering from ankylosing spondylitis were assessed with respect to several personality characteristics by psychological testing and proved to be relatively sthenic and educated. In trying to explain these personality features some disease-related factors seem to be relevant in ankylosing spondylitis: a relatively mild course of disease, the relief of complaints by exercise and a long pre-diagnostic period.