Key clinical point: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients treated with a placebo reported clinically meaningful improvements according to the subjective outcome measure of pain severity as well as objective biomarker measurements of C-reactive protein and erythrocyte sedimentation rate.

Major finding: Patient-reported pain severity, C-reactive protein level, and erythrocyte sedimentation rate decreased significantly from baseline among placebo-treated patients in RA trials (P < .001 for all); the reason for the clinically meaningful response remains unclear and contrary to the study hypothesis, but higher outcome values at baseline may play a role.

Study details: The data come from a cross-sectional study of 788 RA patients from the placebo arms in five international, randomized, controlled trials of 24 weeks or longer conducted between 2005 and 2009.

Disclosures: Five authors received funding from TransCelerate Biopharma for this work.