OT Lyme/CT Atty. Gen's office | Arthritis Information

A press release today from the Connecticut Attorney General's Office:

http://www.ct.gov/ag/cwp/view.asp?A=2795&Q=414284
WooooHoooo!

So, where's 6t5? This is GREAT news!

And anybody reading thru this and thinking we're being helped by Pharma has some rethinking to do.

Pip

!!!!!YES YES YES!!!!!

OMG...it's a frickin' MIRACLE!!!!!!

I'm seeing a ray of hope.

(I wonder if this has anything to do with the release of that movie?)PS...this isn't really "OT" is it?hi suzzane good post.. The Disease Activity Score is not suitable as the sole criterion for initiation and evaluation of anti-tumor necrosis factor therapy in the clinic: Discordance between assessment measures and limitations in questionnaire use for regulatory purposesCorrespondence to Frederick Wolfe, National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases, Arthritis Research Center Foundation, 1035 North Emporia, Suite 230, Wichita, KS 67214

setDOI("ADOI=10.1002/art.21494")The Disease Activity Score (DAS) is widely used in clinical trials. A DAS of 5.1 defines the level of severe rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and is the criterion for the initiation of anti-tumor necrosis factor therapy in the UK and The Netherlands. In North America, similar rules are sometimes imposed. However, it is not known how accurately the DAS characterizes RA activity. The present study was undertaken to determine the concordance between DAS scores and physicians' assessments of RA activity, to investigate factors relating to discrepancies, and to assess the suitability of using the DAS in individual patients.Six hundred sixty-nine RA patients were assessed using the DAS and other clinical measures. A physician's global estimate of RA activity was performed using an 11-point predefined scale and a standard definition of disease activity.The DAS and physician global assessment had substantially different distributions of values. The level of agreement (Kendall's tau-a) between DAS scores and physician global assessments was 49% (95% confidence interval 45-53%), Lin's coefficient of concordance was 0.62, and the Bland-Altman 95% limits of agreement were -3.17 and 3.99. These results suggest poor-to-moderate concordance between the 2 measures of disease activity.The DAS and the physician's assessment of RA activity do not approach, value, and weight RA variables to the same extent, suggesting that RA activity is not evaluated similarly by North American physicians and with the DAS. The scales do not have acceptable levels of concordance. There is too much inherent variability in the DAS and other RA scales (e.g., the Health Assessment Questionnaire) to recommend them as sole determinants of RA activity for clinical or regulatory purposes. People in the UK can get biologics, Boney.

Pip

hi pip only if you meet the das score... i did not . even so
my pred was increased and depomedrol injects given after das test
if you have a look on the web thereare thousands faiing das.
and being left to fend on pred..
Boney

it is my beleif that as ra is so different to people .. they still are unsure.
of half of what is going on in apersons body..i mean my veins were
poppin out my ankles.. legs burning . my doc says you have severe ra
things like this happen wow great answer not good enough..
Boney
All I can say is Richard Blumenthal ROCKS! We love him here in Connecticut. And the really cool thing is that he doesn't seem to have any political aspirations - like wanting to use his position as Attorney General as a springboard for something bigger. He's content fighting bad guys for us as Attorney General. Joe Lieberman did the opposite, and well, you know how that has evolved. . .I've been thinking about this ALL day---I'm so happy! That Lymes thing was making me crazy. Doctors trying to treat Lyme were having their license taken away! And people could have been cured but weren't because of these bozos.
And it still makes me crazy that they tried to say a proven infectious form of arthritis didn't exist when it's an empiracal fact that it does. It's like saying there's no such thing as chicken pox.
Lymes is a kind of arthritis proven to be infectious, and is probably a lot more widespread than most people realise. It's also curable or treatable with long term antibiotics.
These are the Faces of LymeHere I am PIP.!............IDSA has lied for years. I knew it and also many others. This is good news !!!!Hey 6t5!

Hey, do you have any other boards you can post Suzanne's link? Anybody have any other boards? That press release says that they'll take Lymies on the commission. Which translates to me as real people only wanting to get help. This will help us RA peeps too.

Pip

P.S. Anybody going to AF today? I'm the designated chaperone on my daughters field trip.

Great news.

Jan

just wanted to bump this up. I advised Suzanne to look and post on Lymenet.orgDid anybody here on AI use the links? Post this somewhere else? It could really help, if not you, others, in the long run.

Pip

[QUOTE=Pip!] Did anybody here on AI use the links? Post this somewhere else? It could really help, if not you, others, in the long run.

[/QUOTE]
Pip, are you referring to this post by any chance?

http://www.arthritisinsight.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=15722&PN=1Ah - yeah. I figured that out.

Thanks,

Pip

I got the link from Maz on roadback, and I feel pretty sure it has been on the Lyme boards. She is very involved. No, I meant other RA boards. It might help us in the long run.

Pip