Diagnostic value of the serum Midkine in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

Early diagnosis and detection of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) activity which is a potential therapeutic target, depends mainly on clinical presentation. However, laboratory tests may contribute to diagnosis and disease activity assessment of RA. This study aims to evaluate the accuracy of serum Midkine as serological marker for RA diagnosis and its activity detection. All patients with RA were recruited during the period from January 2016 to August 2018 in addition to healthy subjects as control. Serum Midkine level was estimated using enzyme immunoassay. The accuracy was determined for serum Midkine against the used American College of Rheumatology/European League Against Rheumatism 2010 classification criteria for RA diagnosis and disease activity score derivative for 28 joints-erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) score for assessment of RA disease activity. A total of 211 of patients with RA (group I) were enrolled in this study with 112 healthy subjects (group II). Patients with RA were divided into two subgroups according to the disease activity; patients with active RA (group IA) and RA in remission (group IB). We detected that the area under curve (AUC) of serum Midkine level (AUC=0.851) was significantly lower than that of rheumatoid factor IgM and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide IgG for RA diagnosis. However, Midkine presents a significantly higher diagnostic accuracy (AUC=0.939) in detecting RA activity than that offered by C reactive protein (CRP) or ESR. Our study suggested that serum Midkine is a potential serological marker for detection of active inflammatory state with higher diagnostic accuracy than other inflammatory markers as CRP or ESR. Therefore, it can be used as an inflammatory marker for detection of disease activity rather than diagnosis of RA. © American Federation for Medical Research 2020. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.