Lee YC, et al. - A prospective observational cohort study was conducted to distinguish the extent to which opioid prescribing rates for patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) varied in the U.S. and to determine the implications of baseline opioid prescribing rates on future probability of chronic opioid use. Researchers distinguished individuals with RA from physicians who contributed ≥ 10 individuals within the first 12 months of participation in the Consortium of Rheumatology Researchers of North America (Corrona) RA registry. They estimated the Baseline opioid prescribing rate by classifying the number of individuals with RA reporting opioid use during the first 12 months by the number of patients with RA providing data that year. They applied generalized linear mixed models to calculate odds ratios (ORs) for chronic opioid use. It was indicated that rates of opioid prescriptions varied widely. The results of this study showed that baseline opioid prescribing rates were a strong predictor of whether an individual would become a chronic opioid user in the future, after controlling for individual characteristics.