title: A cross-sectional study of the Birmingham Vasculitis Activity Score version 3 in systemic vasculitis.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Assessment of disease activity in vasculitis can be achieved using the BVAS, a clinical checklist of relevant symptoms, signs and features of active disease. The aim of this study was to revalidate the BVAS version 3 (BVAS v. 3) in a cohort of patients with systemic vasculitis.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 238 patients with vasculitis from seven countries in Europe were evaluated at a single time point. Spearman's correlation coefficients were calculated between BVAS v. 3 scores, vasculitis activity index (VAI), physician's global assessment (PGA), the physician's treatment decision, CRP and the vasculitis damage index (VDI) to demonstrate that the BVAS v. 3 measures disease activity.
  
  
  RESULTS
  WG (63%), Churg-Strauss syndrome (9%) and microscopic polyangiitis (9%) were the most common diagnoses. The BVAS v. 3 showed convergent validity with the VAI [ρ = 0.82 (95% CI 0.77, 0.85)], PGA [ρ = 0.85 (95% CI 0.81, 0.88)] and the physician's treatment decision [ρ = 0.54 (95% CI 0.44, 0.62)]. There was little or no correlation between BVAS v. 3 and the CRP level [ρ = 0.18 (95% CI 0.05, 0.30)] or with the VDI [ρ = -0.10 (95% CI 0.22, 0.03)]. The inter-observer reliability was very high with an intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.996 (95% CI 0.990, 0.998) for the total BVAS v. 3 score.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The BVAS v. 3 has been evaluated in a large cohort of patients with vasculitis and the important properties of the tool revalidated. This study increases the utility of the BVAS v. 3 in different populations of patients with systemic vasculitis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Rheumatology, Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford,UK. ravi.suppiah@gmail.com
authors.forename: Ravi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Suppiah
authors.forename: Chetan
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mukhtyar
authors.forename: Oliver
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Flossmann
authors.forename: Federico
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Alberici
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Baslund
authors.forename: Rajbir
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Batra
authors.forename: Denise
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Holle
authors.forename: Zdenka
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Hruskova
authors.forename: David R W
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Jayne
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Judge
authors.forename: Mark A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Little
authors.forename: Alessandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Palmisano
authors.forename: Coen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Stegeman
authors.forename: Vladimir
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Tesar
authors.forename: Augusto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vaglio
authors.forename: Kerstin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Westman
authors.forename: Raashid
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Luqmani
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D015267:Churg-Strauss Syndrome / Q000175:diagnosis; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005060:Europe / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D014890:Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis / Q000175:diagnosis; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055953:Microscopic Polyangiitis / Q000175:diagnosis; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D056647:Systemic Vasculitis / Q000145:classification* / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D055815:Young Adult