Disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug use according to the 'sawtooth' treatment strategy improves the functional outcome in rheumatoid arthritis: results of a long-term follow-up study with review of the literature

Objectives. To investigate long-term functional outcomes of early rheumatoi d arthritis (RA) patients treated actively with disease-modifying anti-rheu matic drugs (DMARDs) from diagnosis, according to the 'sawtooth' principle, and to compare the results to historical data. Methods. The surviving 46 and 65 patients from two early RA cohorts were ex amined on average 13.0 (cohort 1) and 8.5 (cohort 2) yr, respectively, afte r onset of disease. Functional outcome was measured by the Health Assessmen t Questionnaire (HAQ) and compared with the HAQ scores of 57 RA patient coh orts found through a Medline computer search. Results. The respective cross-sectional mean HAQ scores of cohorts 1 and 2 were 0.75 and 0.55, and were more favourable than the mean HAQ scores of 1. 27 (27 cohorts, disease duration >10 yr) and 1.13 (13 cohorts, disease dura tion 5-10 yr) of the comparator cohorts. The median time that our patients were treated with DMARDs out of the total follow-up period was 88%, while i n the majority of comparator cohorts the use of DMARDs was less extensive o r poorly described. Conclusions. The observation of better preserved function in patients with Rh over 13 and 8.5 yr, compared to earlier reports which indicated more sev ere declines, is a hopeful sign for the rheumatology community.