What Is the Persistence to Methotrexate in Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Does Machine Learning Outperform Hypothesis-Based Approaches to Its Prediction?

ABSTRACT:

Objective

The objectives of this study were to assess the 1-year persistence to methotrexate (MTX) initiated as the first ever conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drug in new-onset rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and to investigate the marginal gains and robustness of the results by increasing the number and nature of covariates and by using data-driven, instead of hypothesis-based, methods to predict this persistence.

Methods

Through the Swedish Rheumatology Quality Register, linked to other data sources, we identified a cohort of 5475 patients with new-onset RA in 2006-2016 who were starting MTX monotherapy as their first disease-modifying antirheumatic drug. Data on phenotype at diagnosis and demographics were combined with increasingly detailed data on medic

SUBMITTER: Westerlind H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8280803 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature