Checking blood levels of commonly used disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) has gained widespread attention in the rheumatology community, even resulting in a recent guidance document from EULAR for biologics.1 Although a highly useful tool, drug level measurement in rheumatology is not without challenges; many of our drugs violate the basic principles of pharmacology that we…
RheumMadness is an online tournament in which a bracket of teams, representing key learning concepts in rheumatology, compete against each other in a series of head-to-head matchups, much like basketball teams in the NCAA’s March Madness. The 2023 tournament theme was The All Star Season. Each team represented one all star article competing to be…
Sarcoidosis is a multisystem disease characterized by noncaseating granulomas in affected tissues, mostly involving the lungs and lymph nodes.1,2 The etiology of sarcoidosis remains unknown but is thought to be due to an inflammatory response to an antigen exposure in genetically predisposed individuals.1 Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF‑α), a pro-inflammatory cytokine, plays an essential role in…
Fear of injection decreased when patients with RA switched from self-administering a treatment biosimilar to etanercept in a prefilled syringe to an injector pen, according to a small observational study.
As a veteran rheumatologist, I remember the clinical trials of etanercept’s (Enbrel’s) efficacy. And when the drug was first approved in 1998, I participated in those clinical trials and realized the effectiveness was astonishing. It was easy to tell which patients were treated with etanercept vs. those who received placebo, even though both groups were…
Any given rheumatology patient who needs a biologic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARD) will spend $22,000–44,000 on their medication each year…
In a systematic literature review, researchers found that rheumatoid arthritis patients taking etanercept were less likely to discontinue their treatment than patients using any of five other tumor necrosis factor inhibitors…
Over the past few years, biosimilars and other new drugs have been introduced to treat rheumatic illnesses. Some of the conditions we treat have numerous drug options, others have few or only off-label options. This series, “Rheumatology Drugs at a Glance,” provides streamlined information on the administration of biologic, biosimilar and small molecule inhibitor drugs…
(Reuters)—A U.S. judge on Friday upheld two patents relating to Amgen Inc,’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug Enbrel (etanercept), denying a challenge by Novartis AG, which is seeking to launch a biosimilar version. The decision was a relief to investors concerned about a competitive threat to Enbrel, which had U.S. sales of $4.8 billion last year….
A study comparing seven biologic DMARDs in RA patients aged 65 years and older found abatacept had the highest retention rate and the lowest discontinuation rate…