title: The disease formerly known as rheumatoid arthritis.
abstract: Rheumatoid arthritis is a complex disease where predetermined and stochastic factors conspire to confer disease susceptibility. In light of the diverse responses to targeted therapies, rheumatoid arthritis might represent a final common clinical phenotype that reflects many pathogenic pathways. Therefore, it might be appropriate to begin thinking about rheumatoid arthritis as a syndrome rather than a disease. Use of genetics, epigenetics, microbiomics,and other unbiased technologies will probably permit stratification of patients based on mechanisms of disease rather than by clinical phenotype.
authors.forename: Gary S
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Firestein
mesh_terms: D001172:Arthritis, Rheumatoid / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000235:genetics* / Q000517:prevention & control; D057890:Epigenomics / Q000379:methods; D056726:Genetic Association Studies / Q000379:methods; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease / Q000235:genetics*; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D058990:Molecular Targeted Therapy / Q000379:methods; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000235:genetics*; D013577:Syndrome