Thursday, December 20, 2007

Combining medications often best strategy to battle rheumatoid arthritis

Whilst I definitely do not recommend any treatment by means of this site (please see your doctor before changing any medications), I did find this information regarding comibing medications extremely interesting and thought it was worth sharing. I have included part of the article here as it gets a bit complicated - you'll see what I mean!

Hope this information can help someone out there.

Source: http://www.news-medical.net/?id=33633

"For patients with rheumatoid arthritis, combining one well-known, lower cost synthetic drug with one of six biologic medications often works best to reduce joint swelling or tenderness, according to a new report funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Researchers reviewed published evidence to compare the benefits and harms of three classes of medications: synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), biologic DMARDs, and corticosteroids. Synthetic DMARDs include hydroxychloroquine, leflunomide, methotrexate and sulfasalazine; biologic DMARDs include abatacept, adalimumab, anakinra, etanercept, infliximab and rituximab; and corticosteroids include drugs such as prednisone.

The report concluded that combining methotrexate, a synthetic DMARD, with one of the biologic DMARDs works better than using methotrexate or a biologic DMARD alone."

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