The clinical course of RA is variable and its prognosis difficult to predict. In many patients, the disease process is severe and results in progressive joint destruction and serious disabilities. At all stages of RA, disease activity has a crucial role in disability. The importance of anti-CCP in both the diagnosis and the prognosis of [...]

We analyzed data from 76 RA patients and 83 controls. The two groups were similar with respect to percentages of female gender (88% and 90% for patient and control groups, respectively) and mean ages (53.0 ± 10.8 and 54.1 ± 11.3 years, respectively). The most common treatments received by RA patients were chloroquine, methotrexate 2,5 [...]

Patients
In this cross-sectional study, two groups were compared: 76 RA patients, according to the RA criteria revised by the ACR in 1987, with disease duration of more than two years, admitted to our outpatient rheumatology clinics consequently were included in the patient group. All patients underwent complete clinical evaluation by the same physician (NS) and [...]

INTRODUCTION
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic inflammatory autoimmune disease of unknown etiology, characterized by chronic polyarthritis. RA is diagnosed primarily according to clinical manifestations, and serologic support is restricted to the determination of rheumatoid factor (RF). However, its diagnostic specificity for RA is poor since RF is also found in many other rheumatic and nonrheumatic [...]