Joint Damage Progression in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis in Clinical Remission. Do Biologics Perform Better Than Synthetic Antirheumatic Drugs?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Randomized controlled studies have demonstrated protective advantages of biologic therapies over the synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARD) in slowing joint damage progression in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This effect appears to be largely independent of the clinical disease control. We measured the rate of radiographic progression in patients with RA in clinical remission treated with synthetic versus biologic DMARD. METHODS: This is an observational cohort study of patients with RA in clinical remission, nested within the Swiss Clinical Quality Management in Rheumatoid Arthritis (SCQM-RA) Registry. The primary study outcome was the rate of radiographic progression (Ratingen erosion score), and a secondary outcome was functional disability [Health Assessment Questionnaire-Disability Index (HAQ-DI)] progression. We compared the rate of progression between synthetic and biologic DMARD using a multivariate regression model for longitudinal data, adjusting for potential confounders. RESULTS: A total of 2055 patients in the SCQM-RA registry were in remission at least once from 1999 to 2012 and met the study inclusion criteria. Baseline characteristics of patients in remission receiving synthetic and biologic DMARD were not significantly different in terms of prognostic factors for joint damage progression. During followup, erosion progression differed significantly between the 2 groups [1.4% (95% CI: 1.1-1.6) vs 0.9% (95% CI: 0.5-1.2) of progression over 3 years, respectively, p < 0.001], with less damage progression in patients treated with biologic DMARD than with synthetic DMARD. This difference remained significant after adjusting for confounding factors. The evolution of the HAQ-DI score was also statistically better in the biologic group (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: This observational study confirms that the rate of structural damage progression in clinical remission is decreased taking biologics compared to synthetic DMARD. However, while the difference is statistically significant it is probably not relevant from a clinical perspective.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".