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An official publication of the ACR and the ARP serving rheumatologists and rheumatology professionals

TNF Blockade for SLE

Martin Aringer, MD, and Maria Dall’Era, MD  |  Issue: September 2010  |  

After observing the beneficial effects of TNF blockers in sick lupus nephritis patients, we believe that it would be a terrible shame if we forever lost the opportunity to study TNF blockade in a controlled clinical trial setting. It is our hope that the lupus community will make a commitment to properly address this issue in the years to come and determine whether we are being are too reckless or too cautious in trying a therapy whose benefits in other diseases can be so impressive.

Dr. Aringer is a professor of medicine and chief of the division of rheumatology in the department of medicine III at the University Medical Center Carl Gustav Carus at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany. Much of the experience with TNF blockade in SLE stems from his earlier position as an associate professor in the department of rheumatology at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria. Dr. Dall’Era is associate professor of medicine and director of the Clinical Trials Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

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