Sarcoid Arthritis

Jonathan Hutchinson, in 1877, in what is generally considered to be the first reported instance of sarcoidosis, remarked that, "I was inclined to consider the skin disease as essentially connected with gout."¹Twelve years later, in his classic description of uveoparotid fever, Heerfordt described an unexplained transient knee effusion in one of his patients.²In more recent times, Schaumann, whose name is often linked with that of Boeck in the nomenclature of sarcoidosis, described joint abnormalities in the disease.³Despite these classic reports, it was not until the last decade that arthritis has been considered to be more than a rare and coincidental finding in patients with sarcoidosis. Although many isolated cases had been noted previously,⁴⁻¹⁶in 1952 Myers et al¹⁷were the first to describe in detail a series of patients with significant articular disease, and then, in 1959, Sokoloff and Bunim¹⁸reported their experience with sarcoid arthritis