[Study on Japan Rheumatism Association diagnostic criteria for early rheumatoid arthritis. 1. Application of the American Rheumatism Association diagnostic criteria to Japanese patients with early rheumatoid arthritis].

The Clinical Research Committee of the Japan Rheumatism Association is planning to formulate the diagnostic criteria for early rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We have analysed 123 contemporaneously and consecutively registered patients with early RA and 61 control subjects with rheumatic diseases other than RA (non-RA). As the first step of the works, these 184 patients were applied to the criteria of ARA in 1985 and 1987 for the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of each items. Consequently, we found that the two ARA criteria were not sufficiently sensitive as the diagnostic criteria for patients studied in this work. Therefore it would be necessary to formulate a new diagnostic criteria for the patients with early rheumatoid arthritis.