Does the presence of facet joint effusions on lumbar spine MRI increase your suspicion for axial spondyloarthritis?

Isolated joint effusions in the lumbar spine are not indicators of AxSpA. Involvement in the spine in AxSpA involves more than the facet joint including adjacent entheses linking one vertebra to another and the costochondral joints.

To arrive at this answer, I spoke to rheumatologists with expertise...