Rhumatic arthritis

The authors reviewed the files of male patients who have been hospitalized over a 12 year period for a rheumatoid-factor negative arthritis beginning after age 50. Polymyalgia rheumatica, psoriasis or crystal-induced arthritis were excluded. The remaining 105 observations were classified according to published criteria in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), reactive arthritis or ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Twenty-nine patients had RA and 29 had AS with equal numbers of axial and peripheral types. Four patients had reactive arthritis, one of them had also AS...

Inflammatory rhumatisms simulating rheumatoid arthritis belong to the manifestations of the reactions of leprosy. Pathology of these arthritis variate with the type of reaction. In the present observations, it must probably be the transition from a tuberculoid leprosy to a lepromatosis form in which the immunological state looks like the lupus one.