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Is assaying autoantibodies useful for diagnosing early rheumatoid arthritis?

Nature Clinical Practice Rheumatology volume 1, pages 4–5 (2005)Cite this article

Rheumatic diseases are often difficult to diagnose. In some patients, symptoms and signs of disease are so evident that an accurate diagnosis can be made during the first consultation: for example, diagnosis is clear in patients with joint disease who fulfill a sufficient number of the American College of Rheumatology classification criteria for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In many patients, however, the clinical onset of a particular rheumatic disease can be slow, insidious or incomplete. In such cases demonstration of the presence or absence of specific and predictive serologic parameters might be of utmost importance.

In this Viewpoint we use RA as an example of how serologic markers such as autoantibodies can be useful in the diagnosis of early rheumatic disease. Recent studies have shown that treatment of patients at an early phase of this disease is more effective than treatment at a later point.1,2 Extrapolation of these data strongly suggests that starting effective treatment even earlier, before a formal diagnosis can be made, will be of benefit to the patient, because with present therapeutic agents disease progression can be reduced or even arrested, thereby minimizing irreversible joint damage. The ideal serologic marker should not only be specific for the disease, but also be present in the majority of patients, be detectable in an early phase of the disease and have prognostic capacity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry,

    Walther J van Venrooij & Leo BA van de Putte

  2. Department of Rheumatology at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Walther J van Venrooij & Leo BA van de Putte

Authors
  1. Walther J van Venrooij
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  2. Leo BA van de Putte
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Correspondence to Walther J van Venrooij.

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Competing interests

WJ van Venrooij is a scientific advisor of Euro-Diagnostica b.v. (Arnhem) and Axis-Shield Ltd (Dundee).

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van Venrooij, W., van de Putte, L. Is assaying autoantibodies useful for diagnosing early rheumatoid arthritis?. Nat Rev Rheumatol 1, 4–5 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncprheum0018

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