[Polymyalgia rheumatica]

Abstract

Polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) is a common chronic inflammatory rheumatic disease with unknown aetiology, affecting predominately people of middle age and older. Besides clinical symptoms and diagnostics, imaging techniques including sonography and magnetic resonance imaging may provide evidence of typical inflammatory lesions with bilateral bursitis subdeltoidea or subacromialis, tenosynovitis of the biceps tendon sheath and/or synovitis of the shoulder joints and thus may support the diagnosis of this disease in difficult cases. Corticosteroids are the cornerstone of treatment of PMR, but adverse events because of chronic corticosteroid use are observed in more than 50% of treated patients. Whether immunosuppressants, such as methotrexate and tumour necrosis factor-alpha inhibitors are effective in the therapy of PMR has still not yet been clarified.