Author’s reply to Scott and colleagues and Gough and Foo

No one disputes the importance of early treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.1 2 The central theme is whether the disease is over-diagnosed and over-treated. The epidemiological data are limited, but rates halved from 1955 to the late 1980s.3 Since then it has inexplicably increased but only in women.3 The terrible complications of rheumatoid …