Edited by: Dr Catherine Bowen
Investigation of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) over the past decade has led to important advances in understanding of the clinical characteristics and pathological mechanisms of the disease. Consequently there has been a major shift in the medical management of RA in advocating early, targeted and tight control of disease. Research that investigates the foot manifestations of RA has appropriately followed this direction too and there is an emerging body of international evidence that highlights the burden of RA related foot complaints.
To this end and to coincide with the World Congress of Podiatry, October 2013, we have created this special collection from selected articles published within Journal of Foot and Ankle Research. The collection not only exemplifies this emerging body of evidence but also highlights significant evidence gaps in foot care for patients with RA across the globe.
The challenge now for researchers in this field is to develop robust measures that can reliably detect changes and thus monitor RA disease state within the foot. A further challenge is for clinicians to embrace this evidence, improve access to foot care and enable early detection of disease and targeted tight control of foot disease with effective evidence based interventions.