Rundle and His Curve

It's time to set the record straight on Rundle's curve. For many years, the term Rundle's curve has been used as shorthand in the lexicon of Graves ophthalmopathy as a descriptor of the disease's putative natural history. As depicted in Figure1, the disorder's signs and symptoms are thought to worsen rapidly during a dynamic phase, reach a point of maximum severity, and then abate to a static plateau that is improved but not resolved to the baseline condition. The curve's sinuous shape is probably applicable to many other diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, as well as to numerous nonmedical phenomena, such as the sales of Beatles' recordings since 1964 or the waistline of the average American between Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day. ©2011 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.