Prevalence of Small Bowel Inflammatory Crohn's Disease Lesions in Patients With Spondyloarthropathies (SpA): A Prospective Capsule Endoscopy-Based Study

The link between chronic inflammatory bowel disease and arthritis is well established. IBD is associated with 3 patterns of arthritis (1), one of which is spondylarthropathy (2). spondylarthropathies is not uncommon, with 3-6% of patients with IBD affected, while radiologic sacroileitis is evident in up to 18% of patients. SpA associated with IBD differs from that of idiopathic ankylosing spondylitis in that the prevalence of HLA-B27, although high (20-40%), is significantly lower than in typical AS, where its prevalence is characteristically 90%. Both inflammatory bowel disease and spondylarthropathies show familial clustering and may coexist. Idiopathic ankolysing spondylitis and ankolysing spondylitis usually occurs without overt signs of intestinal inflammation. However, ileocolonoscopy studies have shown a high prevalence (30-44%) of asymptomatic inflammation of the terminal ileum. The nature of this inflammation is highly characteristic of Crohn's disease. Among spondyloarthropathies patients with subclinical inflammation, only 6% were reported to eventually develop clinically apparent inflammatory bowel disease. A more recent review of endoscopy-based studies detected Crohn's disease more frequently, in 18-48 % of patients with spondyloarthropathies and in 5-11% of ankolysing spondylitis.. However, conventional endoscopic and radiological techniques are limited in their capacity to investigate the entire small bowel, and could easily miss significant mucosal lesions due to Crohn's disease.

Capsule endoscopy has been shown to be superior to conventional diagnostic techniques for the investigation of suspected Crohn's disease. The primary objective of this study is to demonstrate that this safe, non-invasive technique will reveal unidentified small bowel lesions in asymptomatic subjects with spondylarthropathies or ankolysing spondylitis more reliably than ileo-colonoscopy with biopsies.

Clinical implications: Spondylarthropathies, ankolysing spondylitis and inflammatory bowel disease are clinically, genetically and pathologically linked. Anti-tumor necrosis factor agents, including Adalimumab, Etanercept and Infliximab, are all efficacious and cost-effective in treating spondylarthropathies and ankolysing spondylitis. Since only some anti-TNF molecules are highly effective for both Crohn's disease and spondylarthropathies and related arthropathies, the present study ideally would lead to a change in general therapeutic practice, leading to wider use of molecules with a wide scope of therapeutic success.