A case of post-streptococcal reactive arthritis.

Reactive arthritis is a term used to describe a sterile inflammatory arthritis occurring after a documented infection elsewhere in the body. Group A streptococcus is known to cause such an arthropathy in the setting of acute rheumatic fever. Friedberg first postulated that a reactive arthritis might occur in response to a streptococcal pharyngeal infection as a separate entity from rheumatic fever in the 1950s. Then, in the 1980s, other investigators began describing cases of reactive arthritis that were not characteristic of acute rheumatic fever based on certain observations and application of criteria. We present a patient whose clinical features are more consistent with post-streptococcal reactive arthritis than acute rheumatic fever.