Published Online First

Objectives To compare the effectiveness and safety of rituximab alone or in combination with either methotrexate or lefl unomide. Methods 10 European registries submitted anonymised datasets with baseline, 3, 6, 9 and 12-month clinical data from patients who started rituximab. Results 1195 patients were treated with rituximab plus methotrexate, 177 with rituximab plus lefl unomide and 505 with rituximab alone. Signifi cantly more patients achieved a European League Against Rheumatism good response at 6 months when treated with rituximab plus lefl unomide (29.1%) compared with rituximab plus methotrexate (21.1%) and rituximab alone (19.3%; p=0.02 and p=0.01, respectively). Similar results were observed at 12 months