Article Text
Abstract
Background Blood neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is a new inflammatory index which has been shown to be associated with prognosis of many disorders including cardiovascular diseases and neoplastic conditions. Its role in acute inflammation was also studied with a good discriminative value from those noninflammatory conditions. The value of NLR in the assessment of activity of inflammatory arthritides is not studied.
Objectives To investigate correlation of NLR with disease activity indices in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and ankylosing spondylitis (AS).
Methods One hundred eighteen RA (76% female, mean age 46.8±10.1 years) and 138 AS (43% female, mean age 36.7±9.3 years) patients were enrolled. Control group constituted 117 healthy subjects (34% female, mean age 36.1±12.0 years). Disease activities were evaluated with DAS28 and BASDAI indices in RA and AS patients, respectively. Hemoglobin, white blood cell (WBC) counts; erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and C reactive protein (CRP) levels were measured. WBC differential was obtained from complete blood counts.
Results RA and AS patients had remarkably higher ESR, CRP and WBC measurements and significantly lower hemoglobin levels compared to control subjects (p<0.001 for each parameter). NLR was significantly higher in RA patients compared to healthy subjects (2.59±1.2 vs 2.15±1.1, p=0.023). NLR is moderately correlated with DAS 28 and CRP in patients with RA (r:0.37 p=0.002, r:0.30 p<0.001, respectively). However NLR was not correlated with BASDAI in AS patients.
Conclusions NLR could be used as a marker of activity in patients with RA and showed a moderate correlation with DAS 28. However such a correlation was not observed in AS patients.
Disclosure of Interest None Declared