Association between red cell distribution width and response to methotrexate in rheumatoid arthritis

Submitted: 31 July 2019
Accepted: 6 December 2019
Published: 10 April 2020
Abstract Views: 1249
PDF: 662
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Authors

Red cell distribution width (RDW) is an unconventional biomarker of inflammation. We aimed to explore its role as a predictor of treatment response in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Eighty-two RA patients (55 females), median age [interquartile range] 63 years [52-69], were selected by scanning the medical records of a rheumatology clinic, to analyze the associations between baseline RDW, disease activity scores and inflammatory markers, as well as the relationship between RDW changes following methotrexate (MTX) and treatment response. The lower the median baseline RDW, the greater were the chances of a positive EULAR response at three months, 13.5% [13.0-14.4] being among those with good response, vs 14.0% [13.2-14.7] and 14.2% [13.5- 16.0] (p=0.009) among those with moderate and poor response, respectively. MTX treatment was followed by a significant RDW increase (p<0.0001). The increase of RDW was greater among patients with good EULAR response, becoming progressively smaller in cases with moderate and poor response (1.0% [0.4-1.4] vs. 0.7 [0.1-2.0] vs. 0.3 [-0.1-0.8]; p=0.03). RDW is a strong predictor of early response to MTX in RA. RDW significantly increases after MTX initiation in parallel to treatment response, suggesting a role as a marker of MTX effectiveness.

Dimensions

Altmetric

PlumX Metrics

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Citations

How to Cite

Bellan, M., Soddu, D., Zecca, E., Croce, A., Bonometti, R., Pedrazzoli, R., … Sainaghi, P. (2020). Association between red cell distribution width and response to methotrexate in rheumatoid arthritis. Reumatismo, 72(1), 16–20. https://doi.org/10.4081/reumatismo.2020.1243

Similar Articles

<< < 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.