Rheumatoid arthritisKorean Observational Study Network for Arthritis (KORONA): Establishment of a Prospective Multicenter Cohort for Rheumatoid Arthritis in South Korea
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Organization and Funding Source
The KORONA was established in July 2009 by the CRCRA. The CRCRA has support from the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare from November 2008 to March 2015 and is 1 of the major initiatives of the National Strategic Coordinating Center for Clinical Research, a nonprofit organization that deals with 11 high-impact diseases in South Korea. The mission of the CRCRA is to improve health outcomes and QOL for RA patients and to promote multidisciplinary RA clinical research across South Korea.
Results
A total of 4922 patients were enrolled in KORONA as of December 2010: 4721 consenting patients and 201 nonconsenting patients. The population of 4721 consenting patients had a mean age of 54.25 ± 12.19 years and included 4023 women (85.21%). The mean symptom onset age was 43.89 ± 12.99 years, and the mean disease duration was 8.30 ± 7.57 years. RF positivity and anti-CCP antibody positivity were 86.8% (4098/4719) and 83.9% (3018/3599), respectively. The comorbidities at enrollment are shown in
Discussion
Data on nearly 5000 patients were entered into the registry, until December 2010. KORONA has a number of features that deserve particular mention. First, efforts to ensure high-quality data collection and management have been made by the CRCRA. A major challenge with this study is to assure that the KORONA data and samples are of consistently high quality, especially given the large number of centers involved in the study. Several measures are used to ensure the consistency of the data and the
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Cited by (0)
This study was supported by a grant from the Korea Health care Technology R&D Project, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Republic of Korea (A102065).