Metabolomics in spondylarthritis.

Background and aim: Spondyloarthritides (SpA) are common entities of the inflammatory rheumatic type. There are still 3 relevant problems in everyday clinical practice: early disease detection, cardiovascular risk assessment, and less so, disease activity measurement. Metabolomics allows the quantification of a large number of small-molecule substances from biological samples.

Methods: The following databases were searched for references: PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Scopus. The period lasted from 1973 until 2024.

Results: Finally, 14 analyses were identified. Most studies have evaluated patients with established disease. Some studies were able to un-mask metabolomic characteristics of certain forms of SpA. Approaches that utilize an integrative view of several metabolites in combination with general patient characteristics appear to be quite promising. Such approaches are suitable, for example, for assessing activity in psoriatic arthritis (PsA) or evaluating cardiovascular risk in individuals with psoriatic disease.

Conclusions: Metabolomics are helpful in identifying new diagnostic and predictive parameters in SpA, so far mainly in PsA. An almost consistent limitation of the studies to date is the inclusion of patients with already manifest disease.