People diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis today have much better outlook than their predecessors

Published April 20, 2017

The importance of early treatment for those diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis has been underlined in a new study published in Arthritis & Rheumatology.

A team looked at information from 602 people with rheumatoid arthritis patients who were recruited from 1990–1994, and assessed them for 20 years. They found:

Overall, patients had relatively low levels of disease activity from year one onwards;
Disability rose to above baseline levels after seven years, but this disability was moderate, suggesting that patients experienced relatively good long-term outcomes;
People who received treatment within six months after symptom onset had similar levels of disability over the next 20 years as people who were judged by clinicians to not require treatment;
A total of 265 patients (44%) died. This number was not significant, but there was a trend indicating that people who received treatment in the first six months had a lower risk of death than those who did not receive treatment.

“This research emphasizes the importance of early treatment and the long-term benefits of early treatment,” says Dr Suzanne Verstappen, who led the work. “In the early 1990s, when this study started, only 30% of patients received early treatment, but this number has increased significantly in the last decade. It’s expected that in the next 10 years, newly diagnosed patients will have a better future with respect to functional ability, less severe disease activity, and improved quality of life.”

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