Patients with rheumatoid arthritis who received initial combination therapy with adalimumab (Humira) plus methotrexate for two years had better long-term disease control than those who started on monotherapy, an open-label study showed.
At five years, 35% of patients whose initial treatment included both drugs met the stringent criteria of clinical remission, normal function, and no radiographic progression, compared with 13% of those who received only adalimumab and 14% of those taking methotrexate alone, according to Désirée van der Heijde, MD, PhD, of Leiden University in the Netherlands, and colleagues