Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio Changes in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients with Oral Focus Infection Treatment

Abstract


 Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease that causes inflammation of the joints. RA is known to have associations with oral infection. Oral focus infection treatment has been shown to reduce RA disease activity. The Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio (NLR) is a parameter to determine the inflammatory activity in RA patients. This study aims to determine the NLR changes of RA patients after oral focus infection treatment. This study is a descriptive and analytic-comparative study using secondary data obtained from the medical records of oral focus infection treated RA patients at Dr. Hasan Sadikin General Hospital, Bandung, from January to December 2019. Data were processed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The data consisted of 17 samples from 3 focus infection categories. A total of 5 samples had a chronic apical infection, 2 samples had a chronic marginal infection, and 10 samples had a chronic apical-marginal infection. The results showed a decrease in median of the NLR after oral focus infection treatment, without statistical significance. In conclusion, there were no significant NLR changes in RA patients who were given oral focus infection treatment.
 Keywords: neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio; rheumatoid arthritis; oral focus infection