[The correlation analysis of amino acids: an aid in the diagnosis of chronic polyarthritis?].

This report is concerned with the correlation analysis of plasma amino acids as a possible tool to differentiate between healthy people and patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Out of 450 theoretically possible correlations between plasma amino acids 95 statistically significant correlations were found in normals whereas 184 correlations were observed in RA. When the method reported here was used to find out whether an unknown sample originated from RA or normal, only one out of 40 RA-samples was incorrect. In controls 3 out of 14 failed. The possibility to use this method for common diagnostic problems is indicated.