TY - JOUR T1 - Correspondence on ‘Which factors are associated with bone marrow oedema suspicious of axial spondyloarthritis as detected by MRI in the sacroiliac joints and the spine in the general population?’ JF - Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases JO - Ann Rheum Dis DO - 10.1136/annrheumdis-2021-220567 SP - annrheumdis-2021-220567 AU - Chun-Lin Su AU - Jhih-Wei Chen AU - James Cheng-Chung Wei Y1 - 2021/05/16 UR - http://ard.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/16/annrheumdis-2021-220567.abstract N2 - We have read with great interest the work by Xenofon Baraliakos.1 The authors evaluated the presence of bone marrow oedema (BME) in spinal and sacroiliac joint (SIJ) MRIs of 793 patients, and analysed its clinical predictors. This study identified that HLA-B27 +, delivery during the last year in female adult, high body mass index (BMI) and presence of back pain in the last 3 months were strongly associated with the extent of SIJ BME, while age and physically demanding work were the predictors for spinal BME. We agree with the hypothesis that mechanic strain such as delivery, high BMI and physically demanding work contribute to BME since multiple other researches also report the same results,2 3 and interestingly, unlike previous studies,4 high-sensitivity C reactive protein (hsCRP) is found not associated with SIJ-BME in this study. However, we believe that at least three points should be discussed to integrate these new results and help guiding further development of predictive … ER -