The Burden of Disease in Rheumatoid Arthritis

Till Uhlig (), Rikke Moe and Tore Kvien

PharmacoEconomics, 2014, vol. 32, issue 9, 851 pages

Abstract: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease which, if left untreated, leads to functional disability, pain, reduced health-related quality of life and premature mortality. Between 0.5 % and 1 % of the population are affected worldwide, and between 25 and 50 new cases evolve in a population of 100,000. Practically all patients with RA require initiation with disease-modifying antirheumatic treatment to retard or stop progression, control disease manifestations and reduce the disease burden. If disease course is monitored with adjustment of medication, lifestyle factors, and exercise, as well as physical activity levels, co-morbidities may be prevented in the course of RA. During the last decade, major progress has been made in treating RA through early identification and treatment of the disease. Many patients still experience premature work disability and co-morbidities. For societies, the economic burden of RA is high in terms of direct and indirect costs, including modern drug treatment. Copyright Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014

Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s40273-014-0174-6 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:pharme:v:32:y:2014:i:9:p:841-851

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40273

DOI: 10.1007/s40273-014-0174-6

Access Statistics for this article

PharmacoEconomics is currently edited by Timothy Wrightson and Christopher I. Carswell

More articles in PharmacoEconomics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().