Optimizing Rheumatoid Arthritis Therapy: Using Objective Measures of Disease Activity to Guide Treatment

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) affects approximately 1.5 million individuals in the United States, or approximately 1% of the US adult population. In women, RA most often begins between age 30 and 60 years; in men, it often starts later in life. Patients with RA may have rapid declines in physical function that can begin early in the disease course. Disability increases most rapidly during the early years of the disease course, and if patients are not accurately diagnosed and do not receive appropriate care early, substantial functional declines may result.

To review strategies and clinical assessment tools that may optimize patient outcomes by using objective measures of disease activity.

The goal of treatment for patients newly diagnosed with RA should be preventing joint damage from developing by employing early and aggressive approaches to therapy that minimize disease activity. Likewise, for established disease, treatment should be aimed at limiting the progression of existing joint damage. Substantial advances have been made in the treatment of RA over the past 2 decades, in large part as a result of better understanding of the biology of RA and the resultant introduction of biologic therapies. In 2010, an international task force published recommendations for a treat-to-target management approach to RA, much of which was based on the use of biologic drugs. This treatment strategy emphasized that the primary target in the treatment of patients with RA should be clinical remission or low disease activity. The tools necessary to measure RA disease activity are often incomplete, imprecise, or rely on a combination of physician and patient subjective evaluations. There is no one symptom, laboratory measure, or clinical tool that provides a truly accurate assessment of disease activity in patients with RA.

Thus, there is a large gap between what is recommended in clinical guidelines and the actual practice of rheumatologists. Better methods of assessing RA disease activity are still needed to enable widespread adoption of guidelines in the clinical community.