Background: Current response criteria in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) usually assess only three patient-reported outcomes (PROs): pain, functional disability and patient global assessment. Other important PROs such as fatigue are not included. Objective: To elaborate a patient-derived composite response index for use in clinical trials in RA, the RA Impact of Disease (RAID) score. Methods: Ten patients identified 17 domains or areas of health relevant for inclusion in the score, then 96 patients (10 per country in 10 European countries) ranked these domains in order of decreasing importance. The seven most important domains were selected. Instruments were chosen for each domain after extensive literature research of psychometric properties and expert opinion. The relative weight of each of the domains was obtained from 505 patients who were asked to ''distribute 100 points'' among the seven domains. The average ranks of importance of these domains were then computed.

Objective: To assess the radiological damage progression in patients with recent rheumatoid arthritis in sustained remission. Methods: A cohort of 191 patients with active early (,1 year) rheumatoid arthritis was prospectively assessed at baseline, 3 and 5 years by the Disease Activity Score (DAS) and the Sharp-van der Heijde Score (SHS) for radiographic damage. Patients in remission (DAS,1.6) at the 3-year and 5-year time points were compared with patients with a persistently active rheumatoid arthritis by Wilcoxon's signed rank test. Results: 57 patients died, were lost to follow-up or had incomplete data; 30 (15.7% of those who completed) patients were in remission at 3 and 5 years. The SHS in these two groups was not significantly different at baseline (p = 0.15), but was lower in the remission group at 5 years (p = 0.0047). The median (IQR) radiographic score increased from 0.5 (0-7) at baseline to 2.5 (0-14) after 5 years for the remission group (p = 0.18) and from 2 (0-7) to 13 (3-29) in the group with active rheumatoid arthritis (p,0.001). 5 (16.7%) patients in remission had relevant progression of radiographic damage (ie, progression .4.1 points) and 6 (20%) presented new erosions in a previously unaffected joint between the third and the fifth years. Conclusion: Patients with early rheumatoid arthritis in sustained remission did not present statistically significant radiographic degradation at the group level; nevertheless, 16.7% of these patients did present degradation. Absence of progression should be part of the remission definition in rheumatoid arthritis. R heumatoid arthritis is a chronic disease that affects almost 1% of the population and has an important effect on health, causing pain, fatigue, radiological damage, functional disability, psychological effects and reduced life expectancy.

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2010 ACR/EULAR criteria identified more patients with RA than did 1987 criteria. The 2010 criteria failed to identify RA patients with symmetrical seronegative arthritis and limited joint involvement.