The Joint Hypermobility Syndrome at the ACR 2015 Meeting in San Francisco

There has been one study on the Joint Hypermobility Syndrome at the ACR 2015 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, abbreviated by the authors: JHS. Jesus, I hope the pope won’t read this as JHS is called the christogramm, derived of the name Jesus (in Greek: ΙΗΣ). Back to the topic. I like more to call the syndrome the benign joint hypermobility syndrome to make sure, we aren’t talking about Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, whereof there were two studies at the ACR 2015 Annual Meeting. Let’s have a closer look at the study.

Anand Patel and colleagues presented: “Mitral Valve Prolapse in Patients with Joint Hypermobility Syndrome”. Conclusion: “This is the first study examining MVP in patients with JHS using the updated MVP ECHO criteria. We did not find ECHO findings consistent with MVP in our JHS patients. […]”.

Please don’t stone me. I’ve never done routine echocardiography on my joint hypermobility syndrome patients, maybe, because I call the syndrome benign and don’t expect mitral valve prolaps in this group of hypermobility patients. I would act differently in patients with Ehlers-Danlos or Marfan’s syndrome. But for those, who did routine echocardiography before, this study offers enough reason to save time and money. The authors are a bit overcautious and warrant a study in other rheumatology practices. D’accord!

References:

Patel A, Schwartz M, Cohen L, Shindler D, Moreyra A, Schlesinger N. Mitral Valve Prolapse in Patients with Joint Hypermobility Syndrome [abstract]. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2015; 67 (suppl 10). http://acrabstracts.org/abstract/mitral-valve-prolapse-in-patients-with-joint-hypermobility-syndrome/. Accessed December 1, 2015.

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