Musculo‐skeletal Symptoms in Early Sarcoidosis

Abstract

Musculo-skeletal symptoms were screened in 24 consecutive patients with newly diagnosed sarcoidosis and followed up two years later. Ten patients had joint involvement. Symptoms were most frequently found in ankle joints, followed by hand and knee joints. Arthritis was found in seven (29%) patients, two of whom suffered from monoarthritis of foot and wrist joint, respectively. Three patients had tenosynovitis. Muscle symptoms such as myalgia were present in six patients. Open biopsy of the gastrocnemius muscle showed epithelioid cell granulomatosis in nine of 20 patients. Only three of these nine patients had symptoms of myalgia, although not in the biopsied muscle. At follow-up, musculo-skeletal symptoms were found in only three patients, all of whom initially had Löfgren's syndrome.