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Review
. 2010:242:79-84.
doi: 10.3109/00365513.2010.493406.

Biomarkers for rheumatoid arthritis: making it personal

Tamsin M Lindstrom  1 , William H Robinson
Affiliations
Review

Biomarkers for rheumatoid arthritis: making it personal

Tamsin M Lindstrom et al. Scand J Clin Lab Invest Suppl. 2010.

Abstract

Effective treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has been hampered by the heterogeneity of the disease. Although early intervention can result in disease remission, it requires early diagnosis - and current diagnostic tests are not sufficiently accurate or sensitive in the early stages of RA. As a result, RA is typically diagnosed only once damage to the joints has already begun, a time at which the window for optimal treatment may have been missed. Furthermore, a significant proportion of RA patients do not respond to any given therapeutic. Research efforts are increasingly focused on discovery of biomarkers that enable early diagnosis and stratification of RA, and thus the implementation of timely, targeted therapy. Biomarkers have the potential to transform the management of RA by enabling not only early diagnosis, but also assessment and prediction of disease severity, selection of therapy, and monitoring of response to therapy. In this mini review, we discuss the development of molecular biomarkers for RA.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Figures

Figure
Figure
Schematic outlining the development and progression of rheumatoid arthritis.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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