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Patients destined to develop rheumatoid arthritis (RA) may present initially with undifferentiated arthritis that does not meet American College of Rheumatology (ACR) criteria for RA. In this study, Dutch researchers developed a prediction rule to identify which patients with undifferentiated arthritis are likely to progress to RA.
The 570 participants had recent-onset undifferentiated arthritis that did not fulfill ACR criteria for RA at their initial evaluation; 31% of them developed RA during at least a year of follow-up. In a multivariate analysis, nine variables from the initial evaluation independently predicted eventual development of RA: age, sex, distribution of involved joints, severity of morning stiffness, number of tender joints…