TY - JOUR T1 - Joint destruction in early rheumatoid arthritis over 8 years is similar in women and men despite apparently higher disease activity and poorer function in women JF - Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases JO - Ann Rheum Dis SP - 709 LP - 710 DO - 10.1136/ard.2010.135343 VL - 70 IS - 4 AU - Ingiäld Hafström AU - Valentina Bala AU - Kristina Albertsson AU - Kristina Forslind AU - Björn Svensson AU - for the BARFOT study group Y1 - 2011/04/01 UR - http://ard.bmj.com/content/70/4/709.abstract N2 - Recently, we have reported from the BARFOT early (duration <1 year) rheumatoid arthritis study that over the first 5 years women had, compared with men, a similar degree of joint destruction despite a higher Disease Activity Score calculated on 28 joints (DAS28) and Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ).1 However, a recent study of another rheumatoid arthritis cohort demonstrated that female gender was an independent predictor of radiographic progression over 10 years.2 ,3 A possible explanation for this discrepancy may be the different length of follow-up. Therefore, we have extended our study to a follow-up time of 8 years.In all, 416 of the initial 549 patients were assessed. Of these 64.7% were women, of whom 54.4% were anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibody positive and 58.2% were rheumatoid factor … ER -