Lindstrom Tamsin M, Robinson William H
Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center (GRECC), VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA, USA.
Scand J Clin Lab Invest Suppl. 2010;242:79-84. doi: 10.3109/00365513.2010.493406.
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.
类风湿关节炎（RA）的异质性阻碍了其有效治疗。尽管早期干预可使疾病缓解，但这需要早期诊断——而目前的诊断测试在RA早期阶段的准确性和敏感性不足。因此，RA通常在关节损伤已经开始时才被诊断出来，此时可能已经错过了最佳治疗时机。此外，相当一部分RA患者对任何给定的治疗方法都没有反应。研究工作越来越集中在发现能够实现RA早期诊断和分层的生物标志物，从而实施及时、有针对性的治疗。生物标志物不仅有可能通过实现早期诊断来改变RA的管理，还能对疾病严重程度进行评估和预测、选择治疗方法以及监测治疗反应。在本综述中，我们讨论了RA分子生物标志物的发展。
