Blood test could provide an early arthritis warning

ConclusionThis laboratory study suggests that for people presenting with early joint symptoms, examining blood levels of a combination of proteins could help to distinguish people who have early-stage OA from those who have early-stage RA or other inflammatory arthritis.  However, this study is in the early stages and so far has only looked at relatively small samples of people with confirmed diagnoses of these different conditions. A lot of further work needs to be done to examine the accuracy of such a blood test, and to see whether it could reliably identify and distinguish between people with these conditions presenting to doctors in real world practice. These studies should assess whether it offers an improvement on the current approach to diagnosis based on symptoms, clinical examination, imaging findings and other blood tests currently used – such as measurement of inflammatory markers, rheumatoid factor, or anti-CCP antibodies. Even if such studies find that the test performs well, it is likely that it would not replace all other diagnostic tests, instead being used in combination with other methods, especially as it performed better at detecting some forms of arthritis than others. Most importantly, it also needs to be seen whether using this blood test as a diagnostic method would actually lead to improved disease outcomes for people with arthritis, as suggested in the news reports.While several of the risk factors associated with OA are unavoidable (e.g. increas...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Medical practice Older people Source Type: news