Kutsuna T, Maeda K, Okamoto T, Kawaguchi M
Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Saga Medical School.
Ryumachi. 1990 Oct;30(5):336-42.
Recently, the disease activity has been believed to be effectively controlled by remission inducing agents such as gold salt and D-penicillamine in rheumatoid arthritis. However, there remain some doubts whether the prognosis of RA has been improved by these drugs or not. The frequency of complete remission in RA patients and their special features were studied to know the real state of the remission of RA under the present treatments. The subjects under investigation were 466 RA patients who were treated with remission-inducing agents for one to eight years. There were 90 male and 376 female patients diagnosed as definite or classical RA. Complete remission according to ARA criteria (Pinals R.S. et al. 1981) was noted in 33 (7.1%) of the 466 patients. However, relapse of the disease activity was observed in five patients during an observation period of two years on average. The followings were noted as the clinical and laboratory features of 26 cases with complete remission which could be observed for more than six months. A breakdown on sex revealed that the remission rate was 13.3% in male patients, compared to 5.6% in female patients. Duration of the disease for these complete remission cases was shorter for males than for females. Clinical examination of the cases with complete remission revealed that the most of them had no family history of RA, as well as no rheumatoid nodule or hip contracture.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
