Remicade

[Guest guest]

This was a headline on abcnews.com yesterday, has anyone tried Remicade yet?

(With or without mtx.)I would like to know any results. Thanks!

Blessings, Dawn

B O S T O N, Nov. 16 — If you’re one of the 2.5 million Americans suffering from

rheumatoid arthritis, there may be new hope for treating your disease.

Research presented Monday night at the annual scientific sessions of the

American College of Rheumatology suggests that a new form of treatment — just

approved by the FDA last week — could even halt the progress of your disease.

Rheumatoid arthritis is the inflammation of joints’ lining, which leads to

progressive damage of cartilage and bone. Within 10 years of their initial

diagnosis, 50 percent of rheumatoid-arthritis patients will be unable to work

because of their disease.

The new treatment involves a combination of therapy with Remicade, a new

drug, and methotrexate, a traditional form of therapy. To test this combination

treatment, researchers studied 348 rheumatoid-arthritis sufferers over the

course of a year, putting 285 patients on the new therapy with Remicade and 63

patients on a treatment course with methotrexate only.

The average study participant had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis

for more than eight years, and more than a third of patients had had previous

joint surgery, indicating that many of the study subjects had disease that had

progressed significantly. The study was conducted at 34 clinical sites across

North America and Europe.

Researchers found that there was an eight percent increase in damage to

cartilage and bones in the methotrexate-only group, the expected damage in the

course of traditionally treated rheumatoid arthritis — but on average, there was

no damage in the treatment group. In 40 percent of the treatment group, the

state of the cartilage and bone improved, suggesting Remicade may have a healing

effect.

Even if they didn’t report relief of pain, stiffness, and other symptoms of

their disease, patients in combination therapy showed joint improvement on

X-rays.

“I think this it will become standard therapy,” said Dr. Lipsky, the

lead researcher on this study and scientific director of the Intramural Research

Program at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin

Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. “We’ve never seen anything like

this before ... it’s a big deal.’

In fact, when researchers started their study, they planned to follow

patients for a number of years. But, after analyzing their preliminary findings,

they decided that their results were so positive that it would be irresponsible

to keep the methotrexate-only patients uninformed. They then decided, after

consulting the FDA, to offer Remicade to the 63 untreated patients.

The Arthritis Foundation has released a statement about Remicade therapy,

endorsing its use, and predicting a bright future, saying that these “research

findings could radically alter how rheumatologists approach [rheumatoid

arthritis] treatment. In theory, by using [Remicade] as soon as a diagnosis is

made, the joint destruction and disability which can begin within the first

several months could be severely slowed -- or totally halted.”

, based in Boston, is a researcher for the ABCNEWS Medical Unit.