Treatment patterns, health care resource utilization and costs of rheumatoid arthritis patients in Italy: findings from a retrospective administrative database analysis

Objectives This study aimed to: 1) describe treatment patterns and drug utilization profile (in terms of therapeutic strategy used, switch, persistence and drug consumption variation) among adult patients affected by rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and 2) estimate the health care resource utilization and its associated direct cost for the management of RA patients.