To the home of the DAS

The Disease Activity Score (DAS) is a combined index that has been developed in Nijmegen in the eighties to measure the disease activity in patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). It has been extensively validated for its use in clinical trials in combination with the EULAR response criteria. Its easy use makes it also possible to collect valuable information about the disease activity of your patient in daily clinical practice.

Evaluation of response to a treatment can be made much easier and more objective using the DAS. Just assess the number of swollen and tender joints and measure the ESR. The DAS will provide you with a number between 0 and 10, indicating how active the rheumatoid arthritis is at this moment.

Recently the DAS-CRP has been developed. The C-reactive protein (CRP) may be used as an alternative to ESR in the calculation of the DAS or the DAS28.

Using the DAS, several treshholds have been developed for high disease activity, low disease activity or even remission. Also response criteria have been developed based on the DAS, so when the DAS of a patient is measured at two timepoints (e.g. before the start of a treatment and after 3 months), the patients clinical response can be assessed.

This site provides all the information you need to start using the DAS. Also an overview of the development of the DAS is given. All original references regarding the DAS can be found here. Frequent problems arising from the use of the DAS are targetted in the section Frequently Asked Questions. Usefull links and downloads like ready-to-use forms and a DAS calculator are also offered.

I hope you will enjoy your stay and will benefit from using the DAS.....just start using it!

Professor of rheumatology, Piet L.C.M. van Riel