Epidemiology of reiter's syndrome in rochester, minnesota: 1950–1980

✍ Scribed by Clement J. Michet; E. B. V. Machado; David J. Ballard; Charles H. Mckenna

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1988
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 377 KB
• Volume: 31
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0004-3591
• DOI: 10.1002/art.1780310316

✦ Synopsis

The incidence of Reiter's syndrome in a predominantly white, community-based population is reported. The age-adjusted annual incidence rate for males younger than age 50 was 3.5 per 100,000. No female cases were identified. Over time, a greater proportion of cases have been identified among younger males. In 63% of the patients, either a prolonged or relapsing disease course occurred.

Only limited information is available regarding the frequency of endemic Reiter's syndrome (RS) in the general population. It has been thought variously to be a rare or a common inflammatory arthropathy, depending upon the population surveyed; the highest rates of incidence observed were in young men in the military (1). The difficulties inherent in identification of community-based cases, caused by the temporal variability of the disease, transitory clinical manifestations, and fragmentation of multispecialty medical care contacts, especially for young patients, were enumerated by Calin and coworkers (2). The specific characteristics of the medical care system in Roches-From the