van der Linden MP, Knevel R, Huizinga TW et al. Arthritis Rheum 2011;63:37–42.
According to the present study, the 2010 American College of Rheumatology (ACR)/European League Against Rheumatism criteria have a higher sensitivity, but a lower specificity, for the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis compared with the 1987 ACR criteria.
The 1987 American College of Rheumatology (ACR) criteria for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) [1] have been criticized because they are not equipped to diagnose early RA; therefore, in 2010, a new classification was derived to achieve increased sensitivity and specificity for identifying patients with early RA. Since the diagnostic and discriminative abilities of these new criteria are unknown, the present study determined the test characteristics of the 2010 ACR/European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) criteria, and compared them with those of the 1987 ACR criteria.