Background & Aims: The anti TNF drugs are new line treatment for articular inflammatory diseases which are used systemically, but due to expensiveness and some systemic adverse effects have limited usage. The aims of this study were to investigate the effect of intra-articular (local) injection of Etanercept and Infliximab as two anti TNF drugs on histopathology and also due to the important ro...

The occurrence of hepatotoxicity following etanercept (tumor necrosis factor-alpha antagonist) prescription, has been studied well. However, an acute hepatic failure leading to liver transplant as an adverse effect of this drug has not been reported in the literature. In this article, we are going to present a case of acute liver failure followed by liver transplantation, in a 32 years old man ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the longer-term efficacy of etanercept in patients with severe and advanced active AS. METHODS Seventy-seven patients who completed the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled 12-week SPINE study enrolled in a 12-week open-label extension and received s.c. etanercept 50 mg once weekly. The etanercept/etanercept group received a total of 24 weeks treatment with etane...

BACKGROUND The REFINE study examined the efficacy and safety of adding topical corticosteroid therapy to etanercept when stepping down from the initial dose of etanercept to the maintenance dose. Clinical responses were shown to be similar in patients who remained on etanercept 50 mg twice weekly (BIW) and those who received etanercept 50 mg once weekly (QW) plus topical therapies through week ...

OBJECTIVE To determine the efficacy and safety of etanercept and etanercept plus sulfasalazine versus sulfasalazine in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) despite sulfasalazine therapy. METHODS Patients were randomly assigned to etanercept (25 mg twice weekly; sulfasalazine was discontinued at baseline), etanercept plus sulfasalazine (unchanged regimen of 2-3 g/day) or sulfasalazine in a ...

BACKGROUND Immunogenicity, specifically the onset of antibodies against tumour necrosis factor (TNF) blocking agents, seems to play an important role in non-response to treatment with these drugs. OBJECTIVES To assess the relation of clinical response of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) to etanercept with etanercept levels, and the presence of antibodies to etanercept. METHODS Patients with AS w...

AIM To investigate the effects of local and systemic administration of etanercept on the formation of epidural fibrosis. MATERIAL AND METHODS Twenty-eight rats were randomly divided into four equal groups (Control, SpongostanTM, Local etanercept and Systemic etanercept) and laminectomy was performed between T11 and L1 in all rats. SpongostanTM was soaked with saline (0.1 mg/kg), local etanerc...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the relationship between serum etanercept levels and clinical response. METHODS In 292 etanercept-treated patients with rheumatoid arthritis clinical and pharmacological data were determined at baseline and after 1, 4 and 6 months of etanercept treatment. Differences in etanercept levels between good, moderate and European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) non-respond...

Etanercept has demonstrated excellent safety and efficacy in the treatment of patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA), which is a chronic inflammatory arthritis. Composed of 2 soluble TNF receptor (p75) domains fused to human immunoglobulin, etanercept neutralizes the inflammatory cytokines TNF and lymphotoxin-alpha. In a phase 2, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of 60 patients with PsA, et...

OBJECTIVE To determine the incidence of disease flare during the first year of etanercept treatment for 88 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and compare it with the incidence of flare in those same patients in the year before etanercept use. METHODS The outpatient clinic charts of all patients with RA who were prescribed etanercept in or before September 1999, who also had at least one ...