The newly minted 2010 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) classification criteria1 were developed using a combination of rigorous, well established and newer state-of-the art methodology. This international effort led by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) resulted in a set of criteria that set the standard for criteria development. Now that the criteria have been published, it is time to see how well they perform in independent cohorts.
Varache and colleagues in this issue of The Journal present their study on the criteria’s diagnostic accuracy in a 2 year cohort2. At the leading edge of many important studies assessing the diagnostic validity of the new RA criteria, patients with undifferentiated arthritis < 1 year were followed forward 2 years for their eventual diagnosis. The gold standard definition of RA in the study was “diagnosis of RA by an office-based rheumatologist after 2 years combined with disease modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) or glucocorticoid treatment.” The authors compared the performance characteristics of 5 criteria sets including the 1987 ACR criteria3 and the 2010 ACR/EULAR criteria1 against their gold standard definition of RA. They concluded that there was no significant difference between the diagnostic accuracy of the 2010 ACR/EULAR criteria and those classified as RA by the 1987 ACR criteria.
A particularly interesting characteristic of this study is that …
Address correspondence to Dr. Bykerk; E-mail: vbykerk{at}partners.org