Pulmonary Manifestations in Patients of Rheumatoid Arthritis and its Correlation with Severity of Disease.

BACKGROUND: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease of unknown etiology marked by symmetric, peripheral polyarthritis. RA has a prevalence of 1-2% in the general adult population. The mortality rate in patients with RA increases during the course of the disease, with a tendency to accelerate after 15 yearsAim: To study the pulmonary manifestations and their severity using [Disease Activity Score (DAS)-28 score] in patients of RAMaterials and methods: Present study was conducted in the Department of Medicine, Sardar Patel Medical College and Associated Group of Hospitals Bikaner, Bikaner, Rajasthan, India, on 100 patients. This study was a cross-sectional, observational study conducted over 1 year. Consecutive cases of RA patients attending the outpatient department or admitted to the medicine wards were selected according to the inclusion and exclusion criteriaResults: Pulmonary manifestation was present in a total of 38% of cases, while the remaining 62% of cases had no pulmonary manifestation. The presence of comorbidity and C-reactive protein (CRP) was significantly associated with pulmonary manifestation in RA patients. On high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT), the most common finding was interstitial lung disease (ILD) (60.5%), with usual interstitial pneumonia (UIP) as the most common pattern. On performing a pulmonary function test (PFT), 33 patients (86.84%) had an abnormal result, with restrictive as the most common patternConclusion: The patients of RA, especially those with advanced age, long duration of disease, male sex, and associated comorbidity, should be screened for pulmonary complications of RA using X-ray chest and PFT, supplemented by HRCT chest wherever required.

Study of Correlation between Diabetic Pulmonopathy with Serum Adiponectin Levels in Patients of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.

Diabetes mellitus a disease with various macro and micro vascular complications due to its various metabolic dysregulations, is well known to involve lungs in long run in both type 1 and 2 diabetes mellitus, causing tremendous burden on health care system. Common simple lung function tests alone are likely to underestimate the prevalence and degree of lung dysfunction in diabetes, but newer noninvasive tests of lung mechanical function provide a more sensitive assessment of peripheral airway function, hence by establishing a marker and risk factors for pulmonary involvement in diabetic individuals, cases with high risk for pulmonary involvement can be found before hand and proper medical therapy can be started for primary prophylaxis of same, Hence in this study we tried to find out any correlation between serum adiponectin levels and pulmonary dysfunction in patients of type 2 diabetes mellitus, which shows a significant role of adiponectin as early marker of the disease with p value of 0.04, the decrease in serum adiponectin level is also associated with more severe disease, hence adiponectin levels can be used as early markers of pulmonary dysfunction in diabetic patients.