Use of administrative claims data for comparative effectiveness research of rheumatoid arthritis treatments

Derivation and preliminary validation of an administrative claims-based algorithm for the effectiveness of medications for rheumatoid arthritis

INTRODUCTION Administrative claims data have not commonly been used to study the clinical effectiveness of medications for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) because of the lack of a validated algorithm for this outcome. We created and tested a claims-based algorithm to serve as a proxy for the clinical effectiveness of RA medications. METHODS We linked Veterans Health Administration (VHA) medical and...

Primary and secondary patient data in contrast: the use of observational studies like RABBIT.

The study of secondary patient data, particularly represented by claims data, has increased in recent years. The strength of this approach involves easy access to data that have been generated for administrative purposes. By contrast, collection of primary data for research is time-consuming and may therefore appear outdated. Both administrative data and data collected prospectively in clinical...

Further evaluation of a claims-based algorithm to determine the effectiveness of biologics for rheumatoid arthritis using commercial claims data

Drug safety analyses in a rheumatoid arthritis registry: application of different approaches regarding timing of exposure and confounder measurement

BACKGROUND Patient registry data serves an increasing role in drug safety and comparative effectiveness research, but registry databases often do not contain confounder information measured at the same time that treatments begin. This study evaluated a set of approaches for estimating confounder values at treatment initiation using actual data from a rheumatoid arthritis (RA) registry to examin...

Molecular Detection of Bacterial Etiology of Rheumatoid Arthritis

Background and purpose: Etiology of rheumatoid arthritis is not fully recognized. The purpose of this study was to use universal and specific primers to trace bacteria in the blood and synovial fluid in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Materials and methods: In this experimental study, a PCR method was developed to identify a wide range of bacteria in general and Staphylococcus aureus in sp...