Introduction:

Rheumatoid arthritis is an inflammatory disorder with a prevalence of up to 5%, and with a significant impact on the quality of life quality. Rheumatoid arthritis is a high cost medical condition. According to a study carried out in the United States by 2010 an annual expenditure of 4.8 million dollars was estimated.

Objective:

To perform a descriptive analysis of the Medline-indexed biomedical literature on economic aspects of rheumatoid arthritis published between 1996 and 2016.

Materials and methods:

The design is retrospective descriptive literature analysis, with a search performed in Medline using GoPubMed and Fabumed, with the following search strategy: (“Arthritis, Rheumatoid” [Majr]) AND (“Costs and Cost Analysis” [Majr]) AND (1996:2016 [dp]).

Results:

A total of 350 references were obtained on economic aspects of rheumatoid arthritis indexed in 80 different journals. Rheumatology, with 6 (1.71%) references was the top journal, followed by Clinical and Experimental Rheumatology with 5 (1.42%). The United States was the most productive country with 30 (8.57%) publications. In Latin America, Brazil and Colombia each contributed with 3 (0.85%) references. During the period studied, there was a growth rate of 41.4%

Conclusions:

Colombia has contributed with less than 1% of scientific production worldwide, and taking into account that the economic analysis cannot be decontextualized, the development of new proposals and contributions in this research area in our country is considered necessary.

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