Objective: When one TNFa blocker (etanercept or infliximab) has failed, to determine whether it makes sense to treat patients with the other. Patients and methods: Since 1999 patients treated with etanercept or infliximab have been systematically followed up at our institution in the STURE database. We identified 31 patients who had received both agents. Results: Eighteen patients received etan...

BACKGROUND Leflunomide is the prodrug of the disease modifying antirheumatic metabolite A77 1726. More than 50% of patients withdraw from leflunomide treatment within one year, mainly because of adverse drug reactions. Therapeutic drug monitoring of A77 1726 may be useful in predicting the efficacy of leflunomide treatment. OBJECTIVE To study the relation between A77 1726 steady state serum c...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate whether patients with RA who belong to the spectrum of fibromyalgic RA (FRA) have an impaired response to treatment measured by traditional activity scores. METHODS Patients from the ESPOIR cohort were analysed. This prospective cohort included 813 patients with early arthritis not initially receiving DMARDs. Among the 697 patients who met RA classification criteria, we ...

BACKGROUND At present, there are no prognostic parameters unequivocally predicting treatment failure in early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. We investigated whether baseline ultrasonography (US) findings of joints, when added to baseline clinical, laboratory, and radiographical data, could improve prediction of failure to achieve Disease Activity Score assessing 28 joints (DAS28) remission...

OBJECTIVES To assess the usefulness of hand function measurements in a study of treatment effects of tumour necrosis factor (TNF) blockers and to define the relationship between different hand function tests and also relate hand function to general disability and disease activity. METHODS The study group consisted of 49 patients with established rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who were followed for...

BACKGROUND/AIM Progressive erosive changes in cartilage and bone in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) ultimately lead to joint deformities and disability which may be early, severe and permanent. Consequently, there is the reduction of functional ability and changes in the quality of life. The aim of this study was to estimate the impact of disease activity on functional status of patients with RA. M...

OBJECTIVE C-reactive protein (CRP) levels>3 mg/L and>10 mg/L are associated with high and very high cardiovascular risk, respectively, in the general population. Because rheumatoid arthritis (RA) confers excess cardiovascular mortality, we determined the prevalence of these CRP levels among RA patients stratified on the basis of their RA disease activity. METHODS We evaluated physician and pa...

OBJECTIVE Treatment in general is mostly directly aimed at disease activity, and measures such as the DAS28 might therefore present important additional information. Our aim was to develop and validate a model that uses a combination of disease activity (DAS28) and HAQs to estimate EuroQoL 5-dimension scale (EQ5D) utilities. METHODS Longitudinal data from a cohort study in RA patients from th...

INTRODUCTION The goal of this study was to compare the efficacy in terms of Health Assessment Questionnaire change from baseline (HAQ CFB), 50% improvement in American College of Rheumatology criterion (ACR-50) and Disease Activity Score in 28 joints (DAS28) defined remission (< 2.6) between abatacept and other biologic disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) in patients with rheumatoid...

OBJECTIVE To compare the Routine Assessment of Patient Index Data 3 (RAPID3) on a Multidimensional Health Assessment Questionnaire (MDHAQ) with the Disease Activity Score (DAS28), Clinical Disease Activity Index (CDAI), and individual core data set measures for correlations, agreement of activity levels, and time to score. METHODS Four rheumatologists each assessed 50 patients with rheumatoid...