Prognostic Evaluation of Inflammatory Polyarthritis of Recent Onset

Inflammatory joint diseases are major causes of invalidity and morbidity. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the most frequent of chronic arthritides, affects close to 1% of the Canadian population. Direct and indirect costs of RA represent close to 1% of the gross national product. Recent evidence suggest that initiation of early (e.g., during the first 3-12 months of disease) aggressive treatment decreases both mortality and long term invalidity in RA and other chronic arthritides. However, a significant proportion of patients with early polyarthritis (EPA) have a benign evolution, even if they fulfill criteria for RA. On the contrary, most patients whose arthritis persist for more than 12 months have a progressive and destructive disease. Currently available clinical, serological and genetic markers of severity in arthritic patients perform poorly in EPA patients to identify those patients wh