Reiter's syndrome--a comparative study of patients with the complete and the incomplete syndrome.

Eighty patients with Reiter's syndrome (RS) were studied retrospectively. A comparison was made between patients with the complete syndrome and patients with the incomplete syndrome. A comparison was also made between patients with and without HLA-B27. There were no major differences in severity and duration of the arthritic symptoms or in mucocutaneous involvement between the complete and incomplete groups, which indicates that they, in fact, represent the same disease. Most of the patients with sacroiliac joint involvement belonged to the HLA-B27 positive group; otherwise there was no difference in arthritic symptoms between the HLA-B27 positive and the HLA-B27 negative group.