Changes in clinical disease activity are weakly linked to changes in MRI inflammation on treat-to-target escalation of therapy in rheumatoid arthritis.

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) treat-to-target (T2T) regimens often use the disease activity score (28 joints) incorporating C-reactive protein (DAS28) as an outcome measure. We compared changes in the DAS28 with changes in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) inflammation on treatment escalation.

Methods: Eighty seropositive RA patients with active disease were enrolled.