Advances in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and the spondyloarthropathies

The 70th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) took place in Washington, DC, USA, from November 10–15, 2006. More than 13,000 attendees, a record number, which included over 9500 scientists, registered for the meeting. Approximately 2000 abstracts were presented, along with a number of state-ofthe-art lectures and topical symposia. While it is not feasible to review all of the important findings from this meeting, an attempt will be made to highlight selected abstracts. This article will focus on the advances in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and spondyloarthropathies (SpA), while a followup article will discuss treatment of connective tissue diseases.