The CRRRI is a network which includes most hospital and office-based rheumatologists of an area with a population of 506,755 inhabitants. All patients seen by the CRRRI participants in their usual practice between March 2008 and December 2010 for inflammatory polyarthralgia, mono-, oligo-, or polyarthritis of less than 1 year duration were included. Patients鈥?serum samples were screened for the presence of anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV) antibodies, with positive samples further evaluated for HCV-RNA with a reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction, and for the presence of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection.
Two hundred and thirty-three patients were included (162 women, 71 men; mean age of 50.6 卤 15.8 years). Patients were evaluated for inflammatory polyarthralgia (n = 51), monoarthritis (n = 21), oligoarthritis (n = 35) or polyarthritis (n = 126) lasting for a mean 19.8 卤 29.8 weeks. No new HCV or HBV infection diagnosis was done.
In this study not suffering from a hospital-selection bias, screening for hepatitis C and B infection was not helpful in the diagnosis process of recent-onset arthritis.
Systematic hepatitis B and C serology is not relevant in patients with recent-onset (< 1 year) arthritis.