Bremander A, et al. - Researchers evaluated hand and foot function over the disease course in rheumatoid arthritis using the Signals of Functional Impairment (SOFI) instrument over eight years. They also studied the clinical variables related to the change and examined the change over time of the SOFI items. They included 1,223 patients with early RA from the BARFOT cohort for this study. In these patients, an improvement in function as measured with SOFI was seen, but it deteriorated slowly afterwards. They noted a correlation between impaired hand and foot tasks and joint destruction at the 8-year follow-up.