Incidence and Prevalence of Rheumatoid Arthritis, Based on the 1987 American College of Rheumatology Criteria: A Systematic Review
Section snippets
Methods
We conducted a Medline search from January 1988 to December 2005 (key words: RA AND incidence and prevalence). The search strategy is presented in Table 1. Additional relevant articles were identified using the option “related articles” in the Medline database, for the articles meeting the inclusion criteria. Articles published before 1987 were not considered, as we included only studies based on the 1987 ACR revised criteria. Studies published in any language and reporting the incidence and
Results
Twenty-eight studies were identified from the literature search meeting our inclusion criteria. Nine were incidence studies; 17 were prevalence studies, and 2 estimated both prevalence and incidence rates. All studies that finally met the inclusion criteria were English publications, although there were 2 French and 1 German publication resulting from the initial search. Table 1 summarizes the results of the Medline search (7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25
Discussion
According to the results of this systematic review, the incidence and prevalence studies of RA based on 1987 ACR criteria differ considerably in their methods and result in a wide variation of the incidence and prevalence estimates.
Methodological differences include the methods of case identification and case recording, as well as the type of incidence and prevalence rates. Some studies do not present age-adjusted rates. In addition, adjusting methods for age differ among studies or are not
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