TY - JOUR AU - YOUNIS , SHERZAD SAEED AU - ISSA, NAJLAA KADHM AU - SULAIMAN, DHIA MUSTAFA PY - 2022/11/09 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - HOMOCYSTEINE LEVEL STATUS IN PATIENTS WITH RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS IN DUHOK: IN RELATION TO DISEASE. ACTIVITY SCORE JF - Journal of Duhok University JA - JDU VL - 25 IS - 2 SE - Pure and Engineering Sciences DO - 10.26682/sjuod.2022.25.2.6 UR - https://journal.uod.ac/index.php/uodjournal/article/view/1902 SP - 57-64 AB - Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) causes high rate of the mortality. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is markedly elevated in RA partly due to accelerated atherosclerosis (AS) from chronic inflammation. Homocysteine’ elevation (Hcys) strongly related to the AS and CVD’s  progression in RA. Current study aims to evaluates Hcys level status and its relation with disease  activity (DA) and inflammation marker (CRP) in Duhok RA patients. Sixty-four RA patients (case) were involved in this study with equal number of healthy individuals (control), means± SD of their age were 47.78 ± 14.08 and 46.98 ± 15 respectively. ratio of females to males was (8.1 and 7.0) in case and control respectively. Blood was analyzed and RA related laboratory and biochemical markers were investigated.The results revealed that Means±SD of Hcys  was higher in case comparing to control (17.30±8.52 and 7.2±3.4) respectively. RA patient with high DA score  recorded higher percentage intra group of increased Hcys level (52%).This study concludes that  there is a strong association between Hcys level and RA activity, severity and inflammation process in RA Duhok patients. Hcys could play role as a predictor marker helping physicians for good monitoring and managing RA disease ER -