RESEARCH - Early sustained RA remission possible without the big guns

[Guest guest]

Medscape Rheumatology

Medical News

CME

Early Sustained RA Remissions Possible Without the Big Guns

From EULAR 2008: The European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress

June 13, 2008 (Paris) — A significant number of patients with

new-onset rheumatoid arthritis (RA) can achieve sustained clinical

remissions following initial therapy with traditional

disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), reported Dutch

investigators here at EULAR 2008: the European League Against

Rheumatism Annual Congress.

By using a tightly controlled step-up scheme starting with low-dose

methotrexate, with stepped-up dosing if necessary, followed by the

addition of other traditional DMARDs or an anti–tumor necrosis

factor–alpha (TNF-alpha) inhibitor, slightly more than half of

patients with RA achieved a remission from 9 months to 1 year after

beginning therapy, reported Ina Kuper, MD, a staff rheumatologist at

the Medisch Spectrum Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands.

" In daily clinical practice, it is possible to achieve a low disease

activity state as well as remission in patients with recent-onset

rheumatoid arthritis by adhering to a tight step-up DMARD treatment

scheme aimed at remission, " she said.

Factors that mitigate against the chance of a sustained DMARD-free

remission, however, include a family history of RA,

overweight/obesity, long duration of complaints at presentation,

smoking, and immunologic markers, noted Diane van der Woude, MD, from

the department of rheumatology at the University of Leiden, the

Netherlands, reporting interim results from a separate study.

*************************************************

Read the entire article here:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/576020

--

Not an MD