Ioana Hotea (1,2), Cristina Pamfil (1,2), Tania O. Crisan (2), Dragos Marginean (2), Radu Popp (2), Simona Rednic (1,2), Leo AB Joosten (2,3).
Affiliation(s):
1. Rheumatology Department of Emergency County Hospital Cluj-Napoca, Romania
2. “Iuliu Hatieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Cluj-Napoca, Romania
3. Department of Internal Medicine, Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Background: Gout is the most common form of inflammatory arthritis that is usually presented with recurrent acute attacks in between intercritical periods (1). Recent studies focused on the potential role of the mean platelet volume (MPV) as a possible biomarker of inflammation in various autoimmune diseases (2,3).
Objectives: To determine whether MPV is a feasible measure of inflammation and disease activity in gout. Methods: We reviewed the hospital records of 139 patients with gout, evaluated between September 2016 and January 2018. All patients met a minimum of 8 points of the ACR/EULAR 2015 classification criteria and/or had a documented presence of uric acid crystals in the synovial fluid. We correlated the MPV with inflammatory markers, respectively ESR and CRP, and also with the level of uric acid and clinical parameters (acute attack, intercritical gout, severity of attack, frequency of gouty attacks). Statistical analysis was performed using IBM SPSS Results: The mean (standard deviation, SD+) age of patients was 62 ±12 years, the majority of them were male (n=107 ,79%). The mean (SD+) level of serum uric acid was 7.78 ±1.2mg/dl. The majority of patients were assessed during the intercritical period (85/139, 61.15%); the rest were evaluated during a flare (54/139, 38.8%). There was a statistically significant correlation between MPV and CRP (r=-0.23, p=0.04). No correlations were noted between MPV and ESR or the level of uric acid (r=-0.188, p=0.07 and respectively, r=0159, p=0.12). Moreover, MPV did not correlate with clinical parameters of disease activity, such as the clinical form of gout, or the severity of gouty attacks (p=0.68). Similarly, MPV was not associated with a higher number of flares per year (more than 7: p=0.699 eta-sq=0.029).
Conclusion: MPV was inversely correlated with the CRP, however MPV did not prove to reflect the disease activity or severity in patients with gout. More studies are needed to determine the role of MPV as a biomarker of inflammation in gouty arthritis.