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Article History

Received: 25 April 2026

Accepted: 14 May 2026

First Online: 28 May 2026

Declarations

:

: The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

: This retrospective study involving human participants was approved by the Hacettepe University Non-Interventional Clinical Research Ethics Committee (project No. GO 21/1073; meeting No. 2021/16; decision No. 2021/16–33; approval date: October 5, 2021). The study was conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the principles of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki applicable at the time of ethics approval. During manuscript revision, the authors considered the October 2024 revision of the Declaration of Helsinki and confirm that the study reporting and ethical safeguards remain consistent with applicable ethical principles.

: The requirement for written informed consent was waived by the approving ethics committee because of the retrospective design and the use of routinely collected clinical data.

: Not applicable.

: The dataset used in this manuscript derives from a retrospective cohort originally assembled for the corresponding author’s Internal Medicine specialty thesis submitted to Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine in 2022. The present manuscript addresses a distinct and more focused research question on baseline BMI and early DAS28-ESR/HAQ-DI outcomes after first recorded advanced therapy in rheumatoid arthritis. This manuscript has not been published previously as a journal article, and the submitted text was prepared de novo for this submission.

: Preliminary findings from the same institutional RA/bDMARD cohort were previously presented as poster abstract PP-032 at the XXII. Ulusal Romatoloji Kongresi (XXII National Rheumatology Congress), 26–30 October 2022, Türkiye, and published in the congress abstract supplement. The abstract focused on obesity prevalence and disease activity among patients with RA receiving bDMARD therapy. The present manuscript represents a substantially expanded and distinct full-length analysis focusing on baseline BMI and early DAS28-ESR/HAQ-DI outcomes after first recorded advanced therapy. Tatar OD, Sandal Uzun G, Bilgin E, Yardımcı GK, Bölek EÇ, Farisoğulları B, Duran E, Ayan G, Özsoy Z, Ekici M, Ünaldı E, Kılıç L, Akdoğan A, Karadağ Ö, Apraş Bilgen Ş, Kiraz S, Kalyoncu U, Ertenli Aİ. bDMARD tedavisi kullanan romatoid artrit hastalarında obezite sıklığı ve hastalık aktivitesine etkisi. PP-032. Journal of Turkish Society for Rheumatology. 2022;14(Suppl 1):60–61. DOI: not available.

: During preparation and revision of this manuscript, the authors used ChatGPT (OpenAI GPT-5.5 Thinking model; used in May 2026, most recently on 11 May 2026) for language editing, clarity improvement, editorial consistency checks, and formatting support. All AI-assisted text and formatting outputs were critically reviewed, revised, and verified by the authors. All scientific content, patient-level data handling, statistical analyses, numerical results, and conclusions were reviewed and verified by the authors against the source dataset and study records. All authors take full responsibility for the integrity, accuracy, and final content of the manuscript.

: This manuscript has not been published previously as a full-length journal article, and no part of the submitted manuscript text has been copied from or published elsewhere, in whole or in part. The relationship of this work to the corresponding author’s 2022 specialty thesis and to the previously published congress abstract is disclosed above.