The Consortium of Rheumatology Researchers of North America (CORRONA) was founded by a group of academic rheumatologists. CORRONA was designed to fill a void in North America as, at the time of its founding, there was no database independent of the pharmaceutical industry that collected data in the clinic from both rheumatologists and patients. CORRONA began collecting data in 2002.

There was also a perceived need to develop a database which collected clinical information from all patients with rheumatoid arthritis in a practice. With the introduction of expensive new therapeutic agents, it was apparent that longitudinal, long term, “real world” data would serve the rheumatology community well. There was also the perception that busy physicians would welcome a system that enabled them to treat individuals with chronic diseases associated with complex comorbidities in a smart and efficient manner while reliably tracking standard outcomes, laboratory and imaging data, as well as toxicities. The new agents have the potential for great individual and societal good, as well as the potential for frightening toxicities. It was apparent that reliance on voluntary reporting from post-marketing surveillance to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and various long term phase IV studies would not be adequate to inform fully rheumatologists and patients about outcomes in this evolving clinical marketplace.

DESCRIPTION OF THE DATABASE

At the time of this writing, June 2005, the CORRONA database has 8755 patients with rheumatoid arthritis, 955 patients with psoriatic arthritis, and approximately 1000 patients with a primary diagnosis of either osteoarthritis or osteoporosis. There are 83 sites scattered in 33 states in the USA (fig 1), and a total of 200 rheumatologists now participate. Patients with rheumatoid arthritis or psoriatic arthritis are enrolled at the time of a routine visit at a site. They are then followed as often as every three months for rheumatoid …