Is rheumatoid arthritis becoming less severe?

Clinical and laboratory data from 2088 successive outpatient attenders with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were analysed to determine whether there is a trend to decreasingly severe disease. The results, after allowing for the difficulties in this type of analysis suggest that successive generations of patients with RA are decreasingly likely to become seropositive, erosive or develop subcutaneous nodules. There are no obvious explanations for these findings.