Crohn's disease associated with seropositive rheumatoid arthritis.

We report two cases of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) associated with Crohn's disease (CD). The first case was a 60-year-old man with longstanding CD who next developed a seropositive, nodular RA. This patient also had bilateral sacroiliitis, but without positive HLA B27. The second was a 65-year-old female with a 15-year history of seropositive RA who presented secondarily a CD. No sacroiliitis or nodules were found in this patient. Both patients were DR1 (DRB1* 0101). Gold salts were only given in the second case and were stopped many years before the gastrointestinal symptoms. A similar case report has been previously described consisting in an ulcerative colitis complicating a seronegative HLA-B27 RA with sacroiliitis. The gastrointestinal involvement in RA may be broad and includes many causes: drug-induced colitis (including gold enterocolitis) vasculitis and amyloidosis located in the gut, associated bowel disease such as collagenous colitis, and also infectious agents. In addition, erosive polyarthritis associated with gastrointestinal manifestations can present a problem in the differential diagnosis between RA and an enteropathic arthritis. Finally, the coexistence by chance of inflammatory bowel disease and RA is suggested by the low occurrence of these two conditions in the same patient.