TY - JOUR T1 - The Patient Experience of Drug Side Effects in Rheumatoid Arthritis: Intriguing Data From an Exploratory Online Survey JF - The Journal of Rheumatology JO - J Rheumatol SP - 967 LP - 970 DO - 10.3899/jrheum.220412 VL - 49 IS - 9 AU - John M. Davis III Y1 - 2022/09/01 UR - http://www.jrheum.org/content/49/9/967.abstract N2 - Understanding adverse events (AEs) of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is critical to both patients and clinicians. AEs—“side effects” from the patient perspective—contribute significantly to patients’ disease experience by interfering with activities of daily living and quality of life (QOL).1 They are also an important source of treatment nonadherence, with deleterious effects on disease outcomes.2,3 Gaining insight into patients’ experiences with medication side effects could help inform the development of new shared decision-making approaches to enhance treatment adherence and long-term disease and health outcomes.In this issue of The Journal of Rheumatology, Hazlewood and colleagues report the findings of their exploratory study of patient-reported AEs of RA medications using an online survey.4 Eligible participants were required to have a self-reported diagnosis of RA, to be taking at least 1 RA medication, and to be under the care of a rheumatologist. Participants were not provided any remuneration. The investigators utilized the Patient-Reported Outcomes of the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (PRO-CTCAE), which was developed and validated for oncology clinical trials. The purpose here was to describe the frequency of symptomatic AEs among items included in the PRO-CTCAE, to identify important items that were not included, and to determine the associations of these AEs with RA drug use. This could be a starting point toward the development of a rheumatology-specific patient-reported outcome measure for medication AEs.Because recruitment for the survey through an academic rheumatology clinic in Calgary was encumbered by the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic, the authors performed a web-based survey implemented by Qualtrics. They chose to include all questions in the PRO-CTCAE survey guide—a total of 80 symptomatic AEs—because the few irrelevant questions enabled a check on the validity of the findings. They advertised the survey on … Address correspondence to Dr. J.M. Davis III, Practice Chair and Vice Chair, Division of Rheumatology, Professor of Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Mayo Clinic, 200 1st St SW, Rochester, MN 55905, USA. Email: davis.john4{at}mayo.edu. ER -