ESTABLISHMENT OF A PROSPECTIVE COHORT FOR RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS PATIENTS WITH INTERSTITIAL LUNG DISEASE: COMPARISON OF BASELINE CHARACTERISTICS BETWEEN RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS PATIENT WITH OR WITHOUT INTERSTITIAL LUNG DISEASE

Abstract

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis-associated interstitial lung disease (RA-ILD) has a clinical significance of high mortality rate in patients with RA. Hence, we established a multidisciplinary prospective single center cohort for RA-ILD patients with multidisciplinary collaboration called the HUMANISM. Patients with RA who have checked a chest computed tomography (CT) scan within previous 2 years were eligible for the enrollment, and they were classified according to the presence of ILD by expert radiologists. All RA patients were assessed with various outcomes of RA, and reviewed for treatment pattern of medications annually.

Objectives: To introduce a prospective, non-interventional cohort of RA-ILD patients, HUMANISM cohort and to compare baseline characteristics and treatment patterns between RA patients according to the presence of ILD using the enrollment data of this prospective cohort.

Methods: We compared the baseline characteristics between RA patients with and without ILD using the Chi-square test and Student’s t-test. For RA-ILD patients, we described the ILD patterns that could be identified in high-resolution CT (HRCT) to determine their dominant radiological characteristics.