Rheumatoid arthritis and coexisting Parkinson's disease a report of 5 cases

Abstract

It is a commonly seen condition that the hand deformities which are seen in Parkinson disease (PD) mistakenly diagnosed as Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) so PD and RA have been associated with each other in the literature. Looking for the another view, in autoimmune diseases, such as RA, there is a chronically high concentrations of inflammatory mediators product over long periods of time and it has been hypothesized that these patients may be at increased risk for neurodegenerative diseases such as PD. To contribute to a few recently published reports, we describe five patients, over 65 years old, with a primary diagnosis of RA and coexisting PD and we discuss possible pathogenetic link between RA and PD. The coexisting cases in this report are most probably incidental but the prevalence of coexisting of RA and PD may be higher than that of regularly thought. The present report is draw attention to the possibility of coexisting and to keep in mind the possibility of developing neurodegenerative disorders due to the chronic inflammation in the course of patients with RA.