Spondyloarthritis in Asian Countries - An Overview

Spondyloarthritis (SPA) is a group of chronic arthritis, characterized by inflammatory back pain, peripheral arthritis and enthesitis. Since 1973, HLA-B27 has been known as an important genetic marker for AS and other SPA. In recent 10 years, after the clinical application of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) for SPA, a lot of researches including epidemiology, genetic and family, immunology and serology, pathology and treatment have been done, particularly in the US and European countries. As a matter of fact, Asian countries own a big population in the world, and fortunately, many studies focusing on the SPA in Asian have been published in the last 15 years. This special issue will review most of the researches for SPA that have been done in Asian people.