Background: Adiponectin possesses anti-inflammatory properties and also has pro-inflammatory aspects in some diseases. Adiponectin plays an important role in bone metabolism and osteoporosis (OP) pathophysiology, modulating bone formation and remodeling by selectively enhancing stem cell development between adipocyte and bone precursors in the bone marrow in response to reduced energy storage and metabolic needs.
Aim of work: The aim of our study was to assess serum adiponectin level in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients and to study the possible role of adiponectin as a marker of osteoporosis in rheumatoid arthritis patients.
Patient and Methods: The study included 30 premenopausal rheumatoid arthritis female patients. The age ranged from 26 to 46 years old and body mass index (BMI) ranged from 23 to 37.34 compared to 15 healthy controls. They were subjected to full history taking. Laboratory investigation was done to exclude other causes of osteoporosis. Serum level of adiponectin was measured by ELISA. They were also assessed radiologically by DEXA scan of lumbar spine to confirm osteoporosis.
Results: In our study, we found that RA patients had statistically significant higher adiponectin level than healthy controls. Moreover, serum adiponectin was significantly higher in patients with both RA and OP compared to RA female patients only. Moreover, our results demonstrated that a serum adiponectin of 1400 μg/L or higher is capable of detecting osteoporosis among RA patients with a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 100%. Regarding predictive ability of adiponectin in detecting RA with osteoporosis, our findings showed that there was an inverse association between adiponectin level and bone density, and there was a significant negative correlation between adiponectin level and DEXA scores in RA group.
Conclusion: There was a clinical usefulness of measuring serum adiponectin in predicting OP among RA premenopausal female patients. This was strongly suggest the possible utility of serum adiponectin as a marker to detect OP in patients with RA hand in hand with conventional parameters.