Markusse and colleagues recently investigated whether rheumatoid arthritis patient subgroups formed according to the presence of poor prognostic factors respond differently to initial monotherapy or combination therapy [1]. Since both poorand good-prognosis subgroups experienced a better response to initial combination therapy, the authors concluded that patient-tailored treatment based on prog...

INTRODUCTION Constrictive pericarditis is an uncommon disease characterized by impaired diastolic filling of the ventricles, encased in a fibrotic pericardium resulting from an inflammatory process. Rheumatoid arthritis is a rare cause of constrictive pericarditis, usually due to a concomitant acute or chronic serositis. PRESENTATION OF CASE This paper presents a unique case of recurrent cons...

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVES Osteoporosis has frequently been observed in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The present study was undertaken in order to evaluate factors associated with osteoporosis among women with rheumatoid arthritis. DESIGN AND SETTING Cross-sectional study, carried out in a public hospital in São Paulo. METHODS The participants were 83 women with rheumatoid arthritis (53.7...

Three hundred and one sera from patients with rheumatic and other diseases were investigated using a simple enzyme immunoassay for screening of rheumatoid factors and antinuclear antibodies. The assay had a sensitivity of 77% for systemic lupus erythematosus, 90% for the primary sicca syndrome, and 89% for rheumatoid arthritis. Only 13% of sera from patients with chronic non-rheumatic diseases ...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the prediction of the postpartum onset of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS Two thousand five hundred and forty seven healthy pregnant subjects were examined prospectively and the relation between serum rheumatoid factors (RF) and postpartum onset of RA was observed. Rheumatoid factors were measured in early pregnancy by the antihuman IgG latex agglutination test (La...