Relationship Between Rheumatoid Arthritis Activation Criteria and Serum Hepcidin Levels

Abstract

Objectives: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic, inflammatory, systemic, autoimmune disease of unknown etiology.It is a chronic systemic disease primarily involving synovial joints. Evaluation of disease activity in RA is very importantin terms of patient follow-up and assessing the response to drugs. Hepcidin is an acute-phase protein. It is greatlyincreased in inflammation or iron overload. Based on this, we aimed to reveal the relationship between Hepcidin, anacute-phase protein, and disease activity in patients with RA in this study.Methods: Fifty individuals with rheumatoid arthritis who applied to the rheumatology outpatient clinic of Kartal Dr.Lutfı Kırdar Education and Research Hospital and 36 healthy individuals as the control group were included in thestudy. All patients underwent general physical examination and locomotor system examination. From routine laboratorytests, complete blood count, biochemical tests, thyroid hormone levels, C-reactive protein (CRP), erythrocyte sedimentationrate (ESR), rheumatoid factor (RF) measurements were performed. We divided the patients with rheumatoidarthritis into three groups as low activity, moderate activity and high activity according to the disease activity score(DAS28). The DAS 28 score was not calculated in healthy individuals because they did not have rheumatoid arthritis.Results: Hepcidin measurements of RA and control groups included in the study were compared. There was no statisticallysignificant difference between hepcidin values in RA group and hepcidin values in control group (p=0.518). InRA group, there was a statistically significant difference between hepcidin and CRP values (p=0.001) and between hepcidinand sedimentation values (p=0.01). There was a statistically significant difference only between hepcidin valuesof the users and non-users of steroid (p=0.042).Conclusion: In conclusion, no statistically significant difference was found between patients with rheumatoid arthritisand healthy individuals in terms of hepcidin levels in our study. Although hepcidin is an acute-phase protein andincreased in inflammatory events, we think that it is not appropriate to use serum hepcidin measurement to evaluatedisease activity in rheumatoid arthritis.