Editorial: Synovial pathobiology and pathogenesis of inflammatory arthritis

The current holy grail for clinicians and researchers investigating inflammatory arthritis (IA), including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), are tools that will allow accurate prediction of the disease course in an individual patient. Ideally, these tools will allow prediction at three critical stages: (i) in undifferentiated IA, prior to progression to definite diagnosis, (ii) prognosis following diagnosis, and (iii) prediction of response to therapeutics. The collection of original research and review articles published in the topic Synovial pathobiology and pathogenesis of inflammatory arthritis neatly review and provide insights into current endeavors to find these tools, and future strategies that may be adopted to make these much-needed predictions.

Remission in RA, probably best conceptualized as being at the very end of a continuum of disease activity, and currently measured by any of the various composite disease activity scores, remains the goal for patients with RA and the rheumatologists treating them...