The Relationship Between Personality And The Presence Of Rheumatoid Factor In Early Rheumatoid Disease

Abstract

In a relatively large series of fresh cases of Rheumatoid Disease, sero-negative female patients scored significantly higher than sero-positive females on The Middlesex Hospital Questionnaire, a quantitatively scored personality inventory of psychoneurotic symptoms and personality traits. This applied particularly to the sub-scale measuring ‘free-floating’ (generalised) anxiety. The significance of this result may be that, from the complex of environmental factors relevant to the aetiology or onset of Rheumatoid Disease, there may be a sub-group of seronegative patients, especially female patients, for whom psychological stress factors are relevant. A controlled therapeutic trial using sero-negative female patients adding psychological to the rheumatological treatment to half the patients assigned randomly may be justified. Sidney Crown The London Hospital London E. 1 England