Surrogate outcomes are associated with low methodological quality of studies of rheumatoid arthritis treated with antitumour necrosis factor agents: a systematic review.

Background: Surrogate endpoints may be used as substitutes for, but often do not predict clinically relevant events. Objective To assess the methodological quality of articles that present their conclusions based on clinically relevant or surrogate outcomes in a systematic review of randomised trials and cohort studies of patients with rheumatoid arthritis treated with antitumour necrosis factor (TNF) agents.

Methods: PubMed, Embase and Cochrane databases were searched.