Just a little more info..I like posting good news | Arthritis Information

 

One of the frustrations for journalists covering a big meeting is that sessions run concurrently, with press conferences often held opposite important oral presentations or the poster discussion period. Or the room fills up before we get there and we’re not allowed in.

At EULAR, from which I have just returned, there were somewhere close to 2,000 original science presentations. We’re publishing about a dozen regular stories from the meeting. Even if I could be everywhere at once, the arithmetic guarantees that some important new research will be left out.

Fortunately, this space allows me to include a few highlights of research I wasn’t able to cover in our normal way. Here are several that could end up altering how rheumatoid arthritis is managed:

• More than half of rheumatoid arthritis patients achieving remission with infliximab (Remicade) and methotrexate can have the biologic drug discontinued without flares or radiographic progression for at least a year, according to a Japanese study.
  
• Moreover, some 75% of patients who do have flares after infliximab withdrawal can regain remission within six months.
• A second course of rituximab is often successful in RA patients who intially fail to respond to the drug.
• Another presentation indicated that the time needed to achieve disease remission in RA correlates strongly with the likelihood of remission being sustained.
• And researchers reported on gene expression patterns that predict response to methotrexate in juvenile idiopathic arthritis.

Of course, RA was not the only disease addressed at EULAR, although it clearly dominated the proceedings.

• New phase III data on belimumab support the drug’s potential in systemic lupus erythematosus.
• An interesting in vitro study found that imatinib (Gleevec) might be effective for systemic sclerosis.
• And a study in mice identified CCR2 chemokine receptor polymorphisms that appear to protect against corticosteroid-induced bone loss. For many patients with a wide range of inflammatory disease, steroids are the only effective therapy. Thus, the finding opens the door to new drugs to help them stay on steroids without developing osteoporosis.

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Blogs/14672
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