Background/Purpose: Small joints of hands in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are usually involved from the beginning, slowing the fine finger movements and inducing progressive reduction in joint function¹. The Hand Test System (HTS) is a sensor-engineered glove tested for the evaluation of different aspects of hand function². The aim of this study was to investigate the utility of HTS glove in analysing the speed of finger fine movements in RA patients and to test the correlation with clinical indexes of disease activity and the Health Assessment Questionnaire – Disease Index (HAQ-DI).

Methods: Thirty-three RA patients with stable disease (F/M 31/2, mean age 62 years, mean disease duration 15 years) performed HTS glove analysis at two different times; the mean time between measurements was 12±7 months. The engineered glove detects the maximum speed of finger movements and their variations between different measurements, that seem to be effective parameters of hand disability². The glove hand function testing provides three quantitative parameters: touch duration (TD), inter-tapping interval (ITI) and movement rate (MR). These variables were correlated with HAQ-DI, 28-joint Disease Activity Score-C Reactive Protein (DAS28-CRP), Clinical Disease Activity Index (CDAI) and Simplified Disease Activity Index (SDAI) acquired at both time of measurements. Obtained data were analysed with t-test, Pearson’s test, scatter plot and linear regression. On the basis of the obtained results, a new composite score, combining HAQ and ITI, was also created. The linear regression was used to combine the two independent parameters (the subjective HAQ and the objective ITI) by reducing them to the same order of magnitude and creating a new composite score (HAQ+ITI), along the lines of DAS28-CRP, thus allowing to assess the patient hand status as a whole. The different effects of therapies were not considered in the present report.

Results: The correlation between the ITI glove data and the clinical scale scores was found only moderate (Pearson coefficient = 0.3). However, the composite score HAQ+ITI showed a significant correlation with DAS28-CRP (Pearson coefficient = 0.8) (p= 0.00018), CDAI (Pearson coefficient= 0.73) (p= 0.0001), SDAI (Pearson coefficient= 0.729) (p= 0.0001) and HAQ-DI scores (Person coefficient= 0.724) (p=0.0001) at both observational times.

Conclusion: The HTS glove seems to offer a new safe and easy tool for evaluating hand joint function by measuring the speed of finger movements in RA patients. The significant correlation between the composite score (HAQ+ITI) and other clinical indexes of disease activity, seems to improve the assessment of the impact of the disease on patient health status, overcoming the limit of the operator-dependent bias.

References: 1. Smolen JS, et al. Nat Rev Dis Primers 2018;4:18001. 2 Patanè M, et al. Joint Bone Spine 2022; 89(1):105272.

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ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/testing-the-hand-function-with-a-sensor-engineered-glove-in-patients-with-rheumatoid-arthritis/