Rheumatoid arthritis(RA) is a disease that has a great impact on the daily lives of patients. Treatment of RA so far, however, focused merely on relieving symptoms, not really on how to solve the underlying problem. Healthcare professionals, patients and their families are understandably frustrated by this reality. Recently, however, there has been a great leap forward in RA research, and several substances that are involved in the progression of this disease were developed. The result of this has been drastic changes in the treatment of RA around the world. In Japan, in particular, we will soon be able to choose treatment that is more closely related to the cause of the disease, thus expanding the options available for the treatment of RA. As a pharmaceutical company committed to the field of rheumatoid arthritis, we, at Pfizer, would like to continue to develop RA therapies that can provide health care providers and patients with better treatment outcomes, and better QOL, respectively. Our mission as a pharmaceutical company is to inform people in Japan of current trends in RA and its treatment, and at the same time, through better communication and therapy, help unite everyone involved in RA, whether they be healthcare practitioners or patients. By doing so, we hope we can help creating a real "change" in the treatment of RA in Japan with the help of all of you. A comprehensive web site "RIUMACHI e-net" has been developed for this purpose. We would like this web site to be a starting point for our mission. This is for everyone who lives with RA: for healthcare professionals, to collect up-to-date information of RA, and for patients and their families, to help themselves better manage their condition. We hope this will be a forum where we can meet to talk about RA in the near future.