HURRA Registry

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic, autoimmune disease affecting approximately 1% of the population. RA is primarily characterized by synovial inflammation leading to pain and damage of the joints but can also involve extraarticular manifestations such as vasculitis, renal and pulmonary complications, elevated cardiovascular risk etc.

The treatment of RA improved with the use of different types of disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARD). DMARDs aim to treat the underlying pathomechanism of the diseases and slow down disease progression instead of just relieving the symptoms by interfering with processes of the immune system. According to the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) recommendations, DMARD therapy should be administered as soon as the diagnosis of RA is established. If the treatment is not proven to be efficient enough, the intensification of the therapeutic strategy is suggested by involving other types of DMARDs or DMARD combinations. Although DMARDs have become a significant breakthrough in the therapy of RA, the treatment of many patients seems to be still challenging, since they show symptoms even after the administrations of several different medications or combinations. The therapy of this patient population still causes a problem in everyday clinical practice.

These patients represent a very heterogeneous population since several causes can lead to difficulties in the treatment of RA. Some of them involve resistance or intolerance to the medication. Besides, contraindication of the drugs due to other pathological conditions and patient noncompliance can worsen the therapeutic effect. RA may occur along with secondary diseases such as osteoarthritis or chronic pain syndromes, in these cases, the lack of inflammation can be observed, but patients still experience long-term pain and decreased life-quality.

We aimed to collect data from patients belonging to this group, so further research based on this register can help to investigate the underlying factors in more details and can contribute to identifying biomarkers to distinguish between difficult-to-treat RA patients.