Is rheumatoid arthritis disappearing?
During the past decades a number of studies have examined the incidence of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in different geographical settings and at different times. Some studies from the 1970s and 1980s reported a higher incidence of RA than seen during recent years, where reported incidence numbers seems to have flattened out at a lower level. Besides a real time dependent decline of RA incidence, changing methodology in classification may be an equally important explanation. Today we may assume that annually 25-50 people from a population of 100,000 will develop typical RA.
Uhlig
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Department of Rheumatology, Diakonhjemmet Hospital, N-0319 Oslo, Norway. till.uhlig@nrrk.no
Kvien
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TK
D001172:Arthritis, Rheumatoid / Q000145:classification / Q000453:epidemiology*; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence