Teitsma XM, et al. - In newly diagnosed patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), experts assessed and validated clinical baseline predictors related to inadequate response (IR) to methotrexate (MTX) therapy. Predictive factors for IR to step-up ‘MTX+’ in DMARD-naive patients with new-onset RA were higher DAS28, current smoking, and no alcohol consumption. A slight decrease to 0.67 was observed in the area under the receiver operator characteristic curve (AUROC) when applying the model to the validation cohort; positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) decreased to 54% and 80%, respectively.