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Rheumatoid Arthritis

U.S. FDA Panel Votes Against Approval of Arthritis Drug Sirukumab

Toni Clarke  |  

(Reuters)—The benefits of Johnson and Johnson’s experimental rheumatoid arthritis drug sirukumab do not outweigh the risks, an advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration concluded on Wednesday. The panel voted 12-1 that the drug should not be approved, citing safety concerns, including an imbalance in the number of deaths in patients taking sirukumab…

Anti-CarP May Play Special Role in RA-Associated Mortality

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Researchers may have established a relationship between a new RA autoantibody, anti-carbamylated protein (anti-CarP) antibodies, and increased mortality risk. The recent study showed that anti-CarP was the only autoantibody associated with mortality, specifically respiratory system cause of death…

Cardiovascular Disease Mortality Risk Remains Higher for Patients with RA

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CHICAGO—Sherine E. Gabriel, MD, MSc, professor of medicine at Rutgers Medical School in Newark, N.J., and a past president of the ACR, presented an overview of cardiovascular disease and rheumatology on a Saturday morning to a room overflowing with rheumatologists attending the ACR’s State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April. She noted that physicians have known for a…

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EULAR Releases 2016 Recommendations on RA Management

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Management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is complex. The ever-expanding availability of new drugs requires that rheumatologists and patients constantly consider treatment strategies and targets aimed at both disease control and symptom relief while remaining cognizant of the increasing high cost of emerging medications. Given such complexity, guidelines to inform rheumatologists about the most recent developments…

RA Treatments Show Mixed Results

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Highlights from the 2017 EULAR Congress MADRID—The anti-IL6 “nanobody,” vobarilizumab, produced mixed results when used with methotrexate (MTX), compared with MTX and placebo, according to results of a 24-week, double-blind Phase 2b study of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), which were presented in an abstract session at the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology (EULAR). The…

Vitamin D May Improve Outcomes for Patients with Early RA

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A recent study examined the differences in T helper cell subtypes and osteoclast precursors between patients with early RA and healthy controls. Researchers found that standard treatment combined with a single dose of cholecalcipherol may better improve the general health of patients…

Disease-Activity-Guided TNF Inhibitor Dose Reduction Works Long-Term in RA

Reuters Staff  |  

NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—In patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), disease-activity-guided dose reduction of a tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi) is safe and effective in the long-term and leads to a large reduction in TNFi use, according to three-year data from the DRESS study. Implementation of this strategy would “vastly improve the cost-effective use of TNFi,” conclude Dr….

Rheumatology Research Foundation Funding Enables Potential Treatment Advancements

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Investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital recently discovered a novel subset of peripheral helper T cells (TPH) that drive rheumatoid arthritis (RA) inflammation. Originally published in the February issue of Nature, findings from this study provided bedrock knowledge for developing new RA therapies. Now, with funding from the Rheumatology Research Foundation, investigators are expanding on…

AbbVie’s Rheumatoid Arthritis Drug Succeeds in Late-Stage Trial

Reuters Staff  |  

(Reuters)—U.S. drugmaker AbbVie Inc said on Wednesday late-stage data showed its rheumatoid arthritis drug performed better than a placebo in reducing symptoms in moderate-to-severe patients who have not adequately responded to standard treatments. Two doses of the drug, upadacitinib, induced a statistically significant reduction in symptoms compared to a placebo in the 12-week long study,…