Arthritis Treatment Today
Rheumatoid arthritis drug carries risk of potentially fatal allergic reaction
TORONTO – The maker of a drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis is updating safety information after an elderly patient taking the medication died from a severe allergic reaction.
Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., in consultation with Health Canada, said allergic reactions can occur from Actemra (tocilizumab) and patients should be closely monitored while taking the drug.
Actemra is administered intravenously to treat adults with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. No Canadian cases of anaphylactic reaction have been reported.
The company said in an advisory Friday that the patient who died had a long history of rheumatoid arthritis and had also been taking other rheumatoid arthritis medications before and after starting treatment with Actemra. The patient was also on blood pressure medications.
The company said this is the first reported case of death due to a suspected severe allergic reaction in a patient treated with Actemra. Allergic reactions that required patients to stop taking the drug were reported in 13 of about 3,800 patients receiving the medication during clinical trials. These reactions usually occurred during the second to fifth infusion.
In the event of an allergic reaction, Actemra should be permanently discontinued, the drugmaker said.
Study proves arthritis supplements don’t work
According a new study, glucosamine and chondroitin supplements, prescribed to thousands of arthritis sufferers, have no effect.
The new research included 10 large, randomized, controlled studies. A team of researchers determined that individuals taking the supplements didn’t differ from those taking a placebo on measures of pain or any changes in joint space.
Lead researcher, Prof. Peter Juni, head of the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Bern in Switzerland, concluded the supplements don’t pose any real danger, however they simply do not work.
When studied alone, Glucosamine monotherapy had a small edge over chondroitin monotherapy. Glucosamine had a small effect on joint space narrowing, while chondroitin alone had no effect.
“None of the two supplements we evaluated appears to have any clinically relevant benefit in terms of pain relief that could be detected by patients with knee or hip arthritis.” Jun and his team concluded.
Furthermore, when benefits were discovered for the two supplements, they tended to be in industry-funded trials as opposed to those without commercial sponsorship, Juni and colleagues indicated.
Worldwide sales of glucosamine hit nearly $2 billion in 2008, an jump of about 60% compared to 2003, Juni said. The supplement became popular after A team of researchers reported in The Lancet in 2001 that glucosamine may be one of the first products to prevent the worsening of osteoarthritis.
Arthritis is a very common condition with over 140 different types that can affect people of all ages. Osteoporosis affects approximately one in three women and one in five men over the age of 50 years Because it is a chronic disease, Arthritis continues indefinitely and may not go away. Regular flares in disease activity can occur.
Early care urged for rheumatoid arthritis
By Clive Cookson in Birmingham
Published: September 15 2010 23:35 | Last updated: September 15 2010 23:35
The onset of rheumatoid arthritis should be treated urgently, scientists say, because new research shows that the disease can often be controlled or even “switched off” in its earliest stage.
The British Science Festival in Birmingham heard on Wednesday that the development of arthritis in patients with early joint pain and inflammation can be predicted quite accurately with simple blood tests and biopsies. The auto-immune process responsible for the disease can then the targeted with drugs, before it causes severe and permanent damage to the joints and other parts of the body.
Karim Raza, of Birmingham University, said rheumalogists were gathering evidence about the benefits of early diagnosis, and the reasons why patients and their doctors delay taking action against rheumatoid arthritis, with support from the National Institute for Health Research, in preparation for a public health campaign on the issue.
“Early diagnosis of RA is essential as we have shown that the processes occurring in the joints of patients in the clinically apparent stage of the disease are different from those occurring later,” said Dr Raza.
Preliminary research suggests that the early disease process can be switched off in 50 to 60 per cent of patients with methotrexate, an inexpensive drug that damps the immune reaction. Those who do not respond can move on to – much more expensive – antibody treatments.
The problem, according to Dr Raza, is that most patients, and many GPs, still regard the onset of rheumatoid arthritis as a non-urgent matter, which they can do little about, apart from taking painkillers.
Although the most obvious effect of rheumatoid arthritis is to destroy bone and cartilage in the joints, its impact is more pervasive. “People with RA die 10 years younger than average … mainly because they are more susceptible to heart disease,” said Dr Raza.
On average today people take an average of six months from the onset of symptoms to see a rheumatologist, because the patient puts off seeing a doctor and then the health service delays the progress from GP to hospital appointment. But effective treatment needs to start within three or four months, according to Dr Raza.
The long-term aim of rheumatologists is for patients and the NHS to take the onset of rheumatoid arthritis as seriously as cancer.