Publications by authors named "Letty G A Versteeg"
Radiographic progression can still occur in individual patients with low or moderate disease activity in the current treat-to-target paradigm: real-world data from the Dutch Rheumatoid Arthritis Monitoring (DREAM) registry.
Peter M Ten Klooster Letty G A Versteeg Martijn A H Oude Voshaar Inmaculada de la Torre Francesco De Leonardis
Arthritis Res Ther
November 2019
Article Synopsis
- The study investigated how the activity level of early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients relates to radiographic damage over three years, focusing on a group treated with a targeted therapy approach.
- Data from 229 patients showed that disease activity scores (DAS28-ESR) were weakly correlated with radiographic progression at various follow-up points, indicating that higher disease activity does not consistently predict worse joint damage.
- Despite the overall weak correlations, the analysis revealed that individual changes in disease activity and the related joint damage over time were connected, suggesting personalized patterns in radiographic progression among patients.
Background: Early and intensive targeted treatment with disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) has been shown to lead to substantial reductions in disease activity and radiograph damage in patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The aim of this quasi-experimental study was to compare the first-year radiographic progression rates between a treat-to-target (T2 T) strategy with initial combination therapy (strategy II, started in 2012) versus an initial step-up monotherapy (strategy I, started in 2006).
Methods: A total of 128 patients from strategy II was individually matched with 128 patients from strategy I on sex, age (± 5 yrs.