Objective.: We aimed to investigate the prevalence of ultrasonographic (US) lesions in healthy entheses and contributing factors.Methods.: US scans were performed on 960 entheses of 80 healthy subjects. Factors contributing to entheseal changes were investigated with regression analysis.Results.: Thickening (20.4% of the entheses) and enthesophytes (23.1%) were the most common inflammatory and structural damage lesions, respectively. Age (p < 0.001), male sex (p = 0.003), body mass index (BMI; p = 0.001), and high physical activity (p = 0.007) were independent predictors of enthesitis scores on US.Conclusion.: The effects of age, sex, BMI, and physical activity on the entheses need to be considered when differentiating disease from health.

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic hyperglycemic state and is associated with microvascular structural alterations. This study aimed to investigate the diameters of capillary loops and morphostructural changes using nailfold video capillaroscopy (NVC) in patients with type 2 DM with and without diabetic retinopathy (DR). This cross-sectional, single-center study was conducted in patients with type 2 DM who were followed in outpatient clinics of ophthalmology and internal medicine. General demographic data were collected from patients. An ophthalmologist examined all patients in terms of DR. A rheumatologist blinded to the clinical data performed NVC. The diameters of apical, arterial, and venous loop of capillaries were measured, and the microvascular changes of capillaries were scored. In this study, 44 patients with type 2 DM with DR (47.7% males) and 20 patients with type 2 DM without DR (55% males) were included. In our study, patients with type 2 DM with DR had more frequent capillary hemorrhage, more frequent ectasia, more frequent giant capillary, and more frequent neo-angiogenesis than patients with type 2 DM without DR. However, these findings were not statistically significant. Further controlled studies with large sample size are needed to determine the characteristic NVC findings of DR in patients with type 2 DM.

Objective: The objective of this study is to evaluate the link between nail fold vessel resistive index (NVRI) measured by ultrasound (US) and capillary loops diameters measured using nailfold videocapillarascopy (NVC), and to assess the morphological appearance of the nail bed in patients with psoriatic nail disease (PND) as compared with healthy controls (HCs).Material and methods: This study was conducted in patients with PND and HCs. General demographic data were collected and clinical assessments were performed for all subjects. The nail plate thickness (NPT) was measured on gray scale using US. The NVRI was measured using color Doppler (CD) US. The measurements of the apical, arterial, venous limb diameters and morpho-structural changes (tortuous, cross-linked capillaries) were assessed using NVC.Results: Thirty-four patients with PND and 15 HCs were enrolled in this study. The two groups were matched for age and body mass index (BMI). Patients with PND had higher NPT and NVRI in comparison with HCs [(20 (17-23) vs 14 (14-15), p<0.001), (0.55 (0.51-0.61) vs 0.43 (0.38-0.49), p<0.001), respectively]. A higher proportion of patients with PND had tortuous capillaries than HCs (62% and 20% respectively, p=0.005). The mean NVRI was higher in patients with PND who had tortuous capillaries than patients who did not have tortuous capillaries (0.58 (0.7) and 0.52 (0.09), respectively p=0.033).Conclusion: Microvascular changes can be detected easily using non-invasive methods such as US and NVC. These methods can provide an objective data to better assess PND.

Objective.: The effect of smoking in psoriatic arthritis (PsA) is under debate. Our aim was to test whether smoking is increased in axial PsA (axPsA).Methods.: Included in the analysis were 1535 patients from PsArt-ID (PsA-International Database). The effect of smoking on axPsA (compared to other PsA phenotypes) and radiographic sacroiliitis were investigated.Results.: Current smoking was more common in axPsA (28.6% vs 18.9%, p < 0.001). It also was found as an independent predictor of axPsA (OR 1.4) and radiographic sacroiliitis (OR 6.6).Conclusion.: Current smoking is significantly associated with both axPsA and radiographic sacroiliitis in patients with PsA.