Table 1.
2010 ACR/EULAR classification criteria for rheumatoid arthritis.
Table 2.
Search strategy.
Figure 1.
PRISMA flow-chart describing the selection process in the systematic literature review.
Figure 2.
Sensitivity and specificity of the included studies. A)
methotrexate as reference standard B) disease modifying antirheumatic drugs as reference standard C) methotrexate+ disease modifying antirheumatic drugs as reference standard.
Table 3.
Characteristics of the included studies.
Figure 3.
Assessment of the risk of bias in the included studies.
3A) Methodological quality graph: authors’ judgment about each methodological quality item presented as percentages across all included studies. 3B) Methodological quality summary: authors’ judgment about each methodological quality item for each included study. +: low risk of bias; ?: unclear risk of bias; -: high risk of bias.
Table 4.
Results of meta-analyses.
Figure 4.
Results of the meta-analyses. A)
methotrexate as reference standard; 7 studies included, 3845 participants. B) disease modifying antirheumatic drugs s as reference standard; 6 studies included, 3018 participants. C) methotrexate+disease modifying antirheumatic drugs as reference standard; 10 studies included, 4134 participants. The black square indicates the point estimate of sensitivity and specificity for the meta-analysis, the dotted line indicates the 95% confidence interval. The continuous line is the hierarchical summary receiving operator characteristics curve. The dots represent the primary studies.
Figure 5.
Results of meta-analyses excluding single studies.
Overall meta-analysis, based on the primary analysis using methotrexate as reference standard, and meta-analysis excluding a single study are reported. The table and the legend refer to the study that has been excluded.
Figure 6.
The distribution of the studies in the funnel plot does not suggest the presence of publication bias. In fact, studies are distributed by each side of the plot, with moreover a lower number of studies with positive results. In the case of publication bias, the opposite situation would have been expected.