Description: Dutch researchers may have a new method of predicting whether patients with arthritic symptoms will progress to the autoimmune form of the disease, rheumatoid arthritis.

By differentiating those patients who will develop full-blown rheumatoid arthritis from those who will not, the new formula could speed earlier treatment of rheumatoid arthritis patients, reducing damage to their joints while sparing those who will not develop the disease the side effects sometimes associated with rheumatoid arthritis drugs.

"You don't want to give treatment to patients who will spontaneously remit, because they will not get the benefit," explained lead researcher Dr. Annette van der Helm-van Mil, a rheumatologist at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. "You want to give it only to the patients who have a high chance of progressing to rheumatoid arthritis."

The findings are published in the February issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism.

Accor