Whole Body MRI for Non-invasive Lesion Detection and Therapy Follow-up: Study With Patients With Radiographic axSpA and Non-radiographic axSpA

Axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA) is a common clinical chronic inflammatory joint disease with a high disability rate. Current assessment of axSpA disease activity mainly relies on patients' self-reported symptoms and signs, which has poor accuracy and reliability. At the same time, existing assessment methods fail to include some important disease characteristics of axSpA, such as active spinal inflammation and enthesitis. Therefore, there is an urgent need to establish a new axSpA disease activity assessment system.

With the development of imaging technology, whole-body MRI (WB-MRI) scanning technology is highly sensitive, can detect multiple parts at the same time, and can fuse multiple sequence images to make disease location and diagnosis more accurate. Currently, Much attention has been paid to it, but it has been less studied in axSpA.

This study established a disease activity assessment model based on WB-MRI imaging assessment, which will provide a new, effective and accurate method for axSpA disease assessment. At the same time, it will provide theoretical basis and practical basis for further understanding of the clinical characteristics of axSpA, the relationship between inflammation and structural damage.

Inclusion criteria

Include newly referred patients if:

The onset of symptoms (back pain/arthritis/enthesitis) < 45 years

Undiagnosed disease with the following symptoms:

chronic back pain (duration of back pain more than 3 months) and/or peripheral arthritis (asymmetric arthritis/predominantly of the lower limbs) and/or enthesitis and/or dactylitis

Exclusion criteria

And diagnosed with non-radiographic or radiographic axial SpA