Battling Arthritis

Apparently, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is associated with cardiovascular disease.

According to a Mayo Clinic team, people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have a higher risk for developing heart disease than the general population.

However, it is difficult to identify which patients are at increased risk. More →

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In lieu of the recent of the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting in Boston, all research on arthritis takes center stage this past couple of days.

However, I would like to give focus on two new rheumatoid arthritis drug or therapies that are currently under works by respective research teams.

First is tocilizumab which has been found safe and effective in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in its Phase III clinical trials.

Researchers tested the effectiveness and safety of tocilizumab, a new humanized, anti-human IL-6 receptor antibody, in patients with moderate to severe active RA despite being treated with methotrexate. Tocilizumab blocks the function of interleukin-6, a molecule that plays a fundamental role in maintaining the inflammation that affects patients with RA.

623 participants in this double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase three trial were randomly given 8 mg/kg of tocilizumab, 4 mg/kg of tocilizumab, or placebo intravenously every four weeks for twenty-four weeks. All participants received weekly doses of methotrexate throughout the study. No other disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs, or DMARDS, were allowed.

Researchers found that a significantly higher proportion of patients treated with tocilizumab showed improvements in the primary endpoint (ACR 20 at 24 weeks). The ACR 20 response was achieved by 59 and 48 percent of patients receiving tocilizumab at 8 and 4mg/kg, respectively, compared to 27 percent on placebo.

The more stringent ACR 70 response was achieved by 22 percent of patients treated with 8mg/kg tocilizumab, but only two percent of patients receiving placebo.

This particular study was led by Josef Smolen, MD from the Medical University of Vienna and Hietzing Hospital (Vienna, Austria).

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