[Colonoscopic evaluation in patients with ankylosing spondylitis]

Introduction: Patients with ankylosing spondylitis can have intestinal inflammatory lesions, thus the use of colonoscopy for such patients should be defined.

Objectives: To assess the gross intestinal colonoscopic changes and microscopic histopathologic findings of patients with ankylosing spondylitis; to correlate the colonoscopic and histopathologic findings; and to study the relationship of the histopathologic findings with extra-articular manifestations of the disease, HLA-B27, BASFI and BASDAI.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of 22 patients with ankylosing spondylitis. The patients underwent clinical assessment, BASDAI and BASFI application, blood collection for HLA-B27 measurement, and colonoscopy with biopsy of four intestinal segments (terminal ileum, right and sigmoid colons, and rectum).

Results: Abnormal colonoscopic results were obtained in 13 (59.1%) patients, the major abnormality being intestinal polyps. The groups of normal and abnormal colonoscopic results (n=9 and n=13, respectively) were homogeneous regarding age, BASFI, BASDAI, and categorical variables, and the P-value showed no significant difference between groups. The histopathological findings revealed abnormal biopsies in 81%, 90.9%, 90.9% and 86.4% for terminal ileum, right colon, sigmoid colon, and rectum, respectively. The histopathologic results showed no statistically significant association with the extra-articular manifestations, BASFI, BASDAI and HLA-B27 positivity.

Conclusions: The histological analysis of the four intestinal segments evidenced inflammatory lesions in patients with normal and abnormal colonoscopic results, independently of bowel symptomatology and therapy used in the treatment of the basal disease.