Register for email alerts and news feeds:
This journal | BMJ Group
rss
Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases 2007;66(Supplement 3 ):iii61-iii64; doi:10.1136/ard.2007.078477
Copyright © 2007 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & European League Against Rheumatism.

THE LUPUS CONNECTION

Disease activity assessment in SLE: do we have the right instruments?

Michelle Petri

Correspondence to:
Michelle Petri, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, 1830 East Monument Street Suite 7500, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA; mpetri{at}jhmi.edu

No new therapy has been approved for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in decades. Interest in SLE by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies has increased, leading to multiple clinical trials. Unfortunately, we have now compiled quite a long list of "failed" trials. If this was due to the fact that the studied therapy did not work in SLE, we could accept it and move on. Of concern, however, is that many of the "failed" treatments had a strong "signal" of efficacy, often in subgroup analyses that made logical sense, given what was known about the mechanism of action of the treatment. This has led, understandably, to concern that there is something wrong with SLE trial designs, particularly with SLE disease activity indices.

Abbreviations: GFR, glomerular filtration rate; SLE, systemic lupus erythematosus


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

This Article

Services
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Bookmark with

Register for free content

The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.

Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.

BMJ Careers - Latest Rheumatology Jobs

Rheumatology Jobs