Spondyloarthritis
associated with sonographic enthesitis and tenosynovitis. Various clinical and quality-of-life variables, including dactylitis, enthesitis, sacroiliitis, TJC, SJC, DAPSA, DAS28, SF-12, BASMI and HAQ scores, were associated with different components of the SONAR-7 score, under- scoring the clinical significance of this new score. CONCLUSION The SONAR-7 score represents a valuable new tool for the US examination of joint inflammation in patients with SpA, both PsA and axial SpA. It demonstrated high specificity and good sensitivity for detecting inflamma- tory activity, good convergent construct validity and reli- able performance across examiners. The focused assess- ment of a limited number of key joints would enhance the feasibility and the integration of an US score such as this into daily rheumatological practice. Author affiliations 1 Department of Rheumatology, Geneva University Hospital, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland 2 Department of Physical Medicine, Rheumatology and Rehabilitation, Faculty of Medicine, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt 3 Department of Rheumatology, University Hospital of Basel, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland 4 Department of Rheumatology, University Hospital of Lausanne, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland 5 Department of Rheumatology, University Hospital of Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland 6 OsteoRheuma, Bern, Switzerland 7 Department of Rheumatology, Fribourg Hospitals, Fribourg, Switzerland 8 Department of Rheumatology, Neuchâtel Hospital, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland Acknowledgements The authors would like to sincerely thank the patients and their rheumatologists (listed at https://www.scqm.ch/en/about-scqm/active- institutions/) for their participation in the SCQM registry, which enabled us to conduct this study. Contributors Study conception and design: MJN and PZ; patient enrolment and acquisition of clinical and US data: MJN, ED, DD, RM, LB and PZ; statistical methodology and analysis: GGE and DSC; writing the first draft of the manuscript: GGE and MJN; drafting the article and critically reviewing it: GGE, DSC, ED, DD, LB, HZ and MJN. All authors critically read, reviewed and approved the final manuscript for publication. MJN is the guarantor. Funding This study was supported by the Warnery Prize (CHF 35 000) from a Swiss non-profit organisation. GGE was supported by a postdoctoral Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship provided by the Swiss Confederation. Competing interests MJN: honoraria for lectures and consulting from AbbVie, Janssen, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer and UCB. A list of current SCQM partners is available at https://www.scqm.ch/en/partners/. Partners from previous years can be found in the respective annual reports on https://www.scqm.ch/en/about- scqm/annual-reports/. SCQM supporting partners had no role in the study design, analysis or interpretation of the data, writing of the manuscript or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. All other authors declare no competing interests. Patient and public involvement statement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, conduct, reporting, or dissemination plans of this research. Patient consent for publication Not applicable. Ethics approval This study was approved by the Cantonal Ethics Committee in Geneva, Switzerland (CCER, project ID: 2021-02271), and conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and local regulations. Before inclusion in the study, informed written consent was obtained from all participants. Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed. Data availability statement Data are available on reasonable request. This study is based on data collected by the SCQM Foundation (Swiss Clinical Quality
Management in Rheumatic Diseases), which operates a national registry for inflammatory rheumatic diseases. Access to the data is subject to restrictions and requires approval from the SCQM Foundation in accordance with the SCQM Rules of Research and Collaboration (https://www.scqm.ch/en/research/research-with- scqm-data/). Interested parties may contact the SCQM Foundation (research@ scqm.ch) to request access to the data for research purposes. Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise. Open access This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
ORCID iDs Gehad G Elsehrawy https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1447-0543 Raphael Micheroli https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8918-7304 Michael J Nissen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6326-1764
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Elsehrawy GG, et al . RMD Open 2026; 12 :e006802. doi:10.1136/rmdopen-2026-006802
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