The disease formerly known as rheumatoid arthritis

Abstract

Rheumatoid arthritis is a complex disease where predetermined and stochastic factors conspire to confer disease susceptibility. In light of the diverse responses to targeted therapies, rheumatoid arthritis might represent a final common clinical phenotype that reflects many pathogenic pathways. Therefore, it might be appropriate to begin thinking about rheumatoid arthritis as a syndrome rather than a disease. Use of genetics, epigenetics, microbiomics, and other unbiased technologies will probably permit stratification of patients based on mechanisms of disease rather than by clinical phenotype. © 2014 Firestein; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.