Symptom-based stratification of patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome: multi-dimensional characterisation of international observational cohorts and reanalyses of randomised clinical trials

BackgroundHeterogeneity is a major obstacle to developing effective treatments for patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome. We aimed to develop a robust method for stratification, exploiting heterogeneity in patient-reported symptoms, and to relate these differences to pathobiology and therapeutic response.MethodsWe did hierarchical cluster analysis using five common symptoms associated with primary Sjögren's syndrome (pain, fatigue, dryness,...