Research Article Early Metacarpal Bone Mineral Density Loss Using Digital X-Ray Radiogrammetry and 3-Tesla Wrist MRI in Established Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Longitudinal One-Year Observational Study

Copyright © 2015 Anshul Rastogi et al.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objectives. Early change in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is characterised by periarticular osteopenia. We investigated the relationship of early metacarpal digital X-ray radiogrammetry bone mineral density (DXR-BMD) change rate (RC-BMD, mg/cm2/month) to longitudinal changes in hand and feet radiographic and wrist MRI scores over 1 year. Materials and Methods. 10 RA patients completed the study and hadwrist 3T-MRI and hand and feet X-rays at various time points over 1 year.MRIwas scored by RAMRIS, X-ray was done by van der Heijde modified Sharp scoring, and RC-BMD was analysed using dxr-online. Results. There was good correlation amongst the two scorers for MRI measures and ICC for erosions: 0.984, BME: 0.943, and synovitis: 0.657. Strong relationships were observed between RC-BMD at 12-week and 1-year change in wrist marrow oedema (BME)