Arthritis Treatment dataset available on Resources Portal
Fresh out of peer review, another great data resource has been posted to the TSHS Resources Portal.
Study Design: Cross-Sectional
Study Topic: Arthritis Treatment
Statistical Methods: Descriptive Statistics, Two-Sample Tests
The Arthritis Treatment dataset contains data on rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients in two age ranges who were receiving care at a clinic in Philadelphia.
With the availability of effective anti-RA agents, disease activity measurements can inform the specification of treatment and are part of an approach known as “treat to target”. In this study, the authors sought to explore age differences in both disease activity measurement and treatment. Of interest was the possibility that elderly patients might be less likely to have their disease activity measured and less likely to receive aggressive treatment. The authors hypothesized that rheumatologists are less likely to measure disease activity in elderly patients and less likely to treat them to minimal disease activity.
Variables in the Arthritis Treatment dataset include age and sex, several indicators of disease activity, and whether or not patients were administered selected common treatments for RA. The dataset is suitable for simple data description, chi-square tests, unpaired t-tests, and Mann-Whitney U tests. Several variables are non-normally distributed and one is approximately normally distributed. There is extensive missing data. Importantly, for two variables, CDAI and DAS-28, missing data is informative as it indicates true non-receipt of these tests and is a focus of the comparisons of the younger and older age groups.
The arthritis treatment dataset was contributed by Dr. Edward Gracely, Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University. Thank you, Ed!