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Abstract
Reactive arthritis is considered a form of an acute, non purulent, inflammatory, asymmetric, monoarthritis or oligoarthritis appearing up to four weeks after infection elsewhere in the body. Beyond this apparent simplicity the problems centre on the lack of suitable methods and proper criteria for diagnosing the infection that triggered reactive arthritis. Fifty patients had been included in our study and were subjected to complete clinical and laboratory investigations. Twenty patients were diagnosed as ReA according to the European diagnostic criteria and another thirty patients had been included with early synovitis, who were referred to the Out Patients Clinic of Rheumatology Department-Medical High school-Hannover-Germany searching for the presence of reactive arthritis. It was recognized that most of the patients were in age group between 21 -30 years(28%) while 6% of the patients lied in the age group more than 60 years. The mean age of reactive arthritis patients was 39.1 ±10.2 with a range between (24-55 years) while the mean age of patients with other arthropathies was 42.13+12.88 with a range between (22-66 years). Male patients constituted the majority of the patients with ReA (60%) while females constituted the majority of the patients with other arthropathies (56.7%).As regard physical findings recorded in the examined patients, painful joints, tenderness, and effusion were the commonest (100%) in reactive arthritis and in patients with other arthropathies, while the enthesopathies were the least (30%) (23.3%) respectively in reactive arthritis, and in patients with other arthropathies.