Optical Spectral Transmission to Assess Glucocorticoid Therapy Response in Patients with Arthritis: a Longitudinal Follow-up Comparison with Joint Ultrasound

Overview

Journal Arthritis Res Ther

Publisher Biomed Central

Specialty Rheumatology

Date 2023 Mar 25

PMID 36964628

Authors

Konstantinos Triantafyllias

Tatjana Marinoska

Caroline Heller

Michele De Blasi

Muthuraman Muthuraman

Andreas Schwarting

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: Optical spectral transmission (OST) is a modern diagnostic modality, able to assess the blood-specific absorption of light transmitted through a tissue, promising quantification of inflammation in the finger and wrist joints of patients with arthritis. To date, there are no adequate data regarding the diagnostic value of OST in the evaluation of inflammatory activity changes, during arthritis follow-up. Objectives of this study were therefore to examine the performance of OST in assessing response to anti-inflammatory therapy in patients with active arthritis and to explore OST associations with clinical, laboratory, and ultrasonographic (US) activity markers.

Methods: 1173 joints of 54 patients with arthritides of the wrist and finger joints were examined by OST before and after oral administration of glucocorticoids (GC), during a disease flare. For the same time-points patients underwent clinical, laboratory, and joint US [grayscale (GSUS), power-Doppler (PDUS)] examinations. The distribution of ΔOST-values between the two time-points was compared with the respective distributions of ΔPDUS and ΔGSUS by Bayesian statistical analyses. Moreover, the diagnostic performance of OST compared to a control group (2508 joints of 114 subjects) was examined by receiver operating characteristics and associations of OST values with clinical, laboratory, and arthrosonographic parameters were evaluated by correlation analyses.

Results: OST and US performed similarly in the assessment of inflammatory changes caused by GC (same value-change tendency in 83.2% of the cases). Bayesian statistics revealed no significant differences between ΔOST and ΔPDUS for all 3 examined joint categories (accuracy: metacarpophalangeal (MCP): 68.1%; proximal interphalangeal (PIP): 60.4%; wrists: 50.4%) and between ΔOST and ΔGSUS for MCP and PIP joints (accuracy: 51.1% and 78.7%, respectively). OST diagnostic performance (patients vs. controls) was excellent in both time-points [area under the curve (AUC) before GC=0.883(95%CI=0.83-0.94) and after GC=0.811(95%CI=0.74-0.881); p<0.001]. Furthermore, OST correlated significantly with all examined sonographic activity scores (all; p<0.001) and with swollen joint counts (p<0.01).

Conclusions: OST was able to assess response to therapy in a similar way to joint US and correlated significantly with arthritis activity markers. Therefore, OST has proved to be a valuable tool to assist disease activity monitoring in the examined cohort.

Trial Registration: German Registry of Clinical Trials, DRKS00016752.

Citing Articles

Diagnostic performance of optical spectral transmission compared to magnetic resonance imaging in patients with inflammatory arthritis.

Triantafyllias K, Alhaddad M, Schwarting A, Balaklytska V, Baraliakos X Arthritis Res Ther. 2025; 27(1):17.

PMID: 39885525 PMC: 11780789. DOI: 10.1186/s13075-025-03478-y.

Increased predictive value of optical spectral transmission in early rheumatoid arthritis through use of patient-adjusted cut-off scores.

Triantafyllias K, Altamimi K, Schederecker F, Schwarting A Arthritis Res Ther. 2024; 26(1):165.

PMID: 39304933 PMC: 11414023. DOI: 10.1186/s13075-024-03400-y.

Optical imaging (HandScan) can identify ultrasound remission in rheumatoid arthritis.

Rinkin C, Malaise O, Chauveheid F, Gerard C, Seidel L, Malaise M BMC Musculoskelet Disord. 2024; 25(1):361.

PMID: 38714989 PMC: 11075232. DOI: 10.1186/s12891-024-07472-4.

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