The Nijmegen inception cohort was initiated at the department of rheumatology in the Radboud University Medical Centre in 1985. Patients were included at diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in the out-patient clinic of the departments of rheumatology of the Radboud UMC (since 1985) or the Maartenskliniek in Nijmegen (since 1990) and followed until 2014.
At inclusion, patients had a disease duration of less than 12 months and were disease modifying anti-rheumatic drug naive and fulfilled the 1987 ACR (inclusion before 2010) or ACR/EULAR 2010 criteria (inclusion after 2010). After inclusion, patients were followed throughout the rest of the course of RA until death or January 2014. Enrolled patients were seen every 3-6 months. During these visits, elaborate data on demographics, biomarkers, disease activity, (co-)medication and comorbidity were collected. More than 1200 patients were included in the total cohort.
Data on cardiovascular (CV) events and CV risk factors were collected through extensive chart and electronic patient record review. Deaths due to CV disease were verified from death certificates, provided by Statistics Netherlands. A total of 1157 RA patients from the Nijmegen inception cohort were contributed to the total ATACC-RA cohort, with 266 CV events of which 181 are first events.
Starting april 2014 a new cohort of patients with RA were collected at the department of Rheumatology Bernhoven. All patients attending the outpatient clinic are included resulting in a total number of almost 1000 patients. Data are being collected in an eHealth platform, both by the patients as well as by the healthcare professionals. Data on demographics, disease characteristics, treatments, comorbidities (with an emphasis on cardiovascular comorbidities), quality of life and socio economic data are being collected.