background: bone mineral density (bmd) changes during the course of rheumatoid arthritis (ra). the present study was designed to investigate the status of bmd in patients with ra treated with anti-rheumatic drugs. methods: bmd at the femoral neck (fn-bmd) and lumbar spine (ls-bmd) were measured by dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (dxa) method using norland densitometer. disease activity (da) wa...

OBJECTIVE To compare the costs and benefits of alternative combination strategies of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARD) and DMARD monotherapy in patients with early, active rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS Data were drawn from randomized controlled trials that compared DMARD monotherapy or any DMARD combination strategy, with or without combined steroid therapy. Mixed treatment c...

INTRODUCTION This study aimed to describe treatment changes (discontinuation, switching, and therapy add-on) following the initiation of biologic or nonbiologic oral disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) in psoriatic arthritis (PsA) patients. METHODS Adult patients with ≥2 PsA diagnoses from physician office visits, initiated on a biologic or nonbiologic oral DMARD, were selected fro...

1. Distinguish between biologic DMARD use and nonbiologic DMARD use in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). 2. Assess the differences between classes of biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) therapy. 3. Based on individual patient characteristics, construct a treatment and monitoring plan for a patient with RA and, when appropriate, include biologic DMARD therapy. 4. Just...

Combinations of disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) are increasingly being used in patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) when long term results with sequential DMARD monotherapy are disappointing. Combination DMARD therapy may be more effective than monotherapy, and has no additional short term adverse events. The evidence for using combination DMARD therapy is still weak, ho...

OBJECTIVE To measure the long-term rate of radiographic progression in a cohort of patients treated early vs late with conventional DMARDs. METHODS The long-term rate of radiographic progression in patients included in the Swiss clinical quality management in rheumatoid arthritis (SCQM-RA) registry who initiated treatment with conventional DMARDs within the first year of symptom onset (early ...

Periodic assessment of gene expression for diagnosis and monitoring in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) may provide a readily available and useful method to detect subclinical disease progression and follow responses to therapy with disease modifying anti-rheumatic agents (DMARDs) or anti-TNF-α therapy. We used quantitative real-time PCR to compare peripheral blood gene expression profiles in active (...

OBJECTIVE To analyze changes in the lag time to first disease modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) prescription since onset of symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) over the last 2 decades in Spain. PATIENTS AND METHOD Review of medical records of 865 patients diagnosed with RA living in Spain and attended in specialty care settings of the National Health System. The principal variable was th...

Background: Outcomes in early Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) may be improved by rapidly establishing a stable and effective disease modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARD) treatment regimen. We aimed to investigate whether baseline factors and initial treatment strategies are associated with changes to the first DMARD treatment, due to either Lack of Efficacy (LoE) or Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) withi...