Editorial

Is having rheumatoid arthritis a fate worse than death? Can we accurately measure quality of life using EuroQol? This editorial refers to Who are the patients with early arthritis with worse than death scores on the EQ-5D? Results from the ESPOIR cohort, by Cécile Gaujoux-Viala et al., doi:10.1093/rheumatology/kes270, on pages 8328. In this issue of Rheumatology, Gaujoux-Viala et al. [1] stu-died a cohort (ESPOIR) with early rheumatoid arthritis (ERA) where 813 patients were followed up for more than 2 years and rated their quality of life (QoL). This valu-able study demonstrates that initially 11 % and later 3.3% have a utility that is worse than death, which translates as death being a better quality of life than their current R