Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic erosive rheumatic disease that can present with polyarticular involvement. Anti-TNF-alpha drugs are used in cases that are resistant to traditional disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs). Anti-TNF-alpha drugs are groundbreaking drugs, the efficacy of which has been proven in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. However, the data concerning safety rema...

MONG THE PROBLEMS often confronting the physician treating patients with rheumatoid arthritis is a recalcitrant anemia.’3 It tends to be hypochromic and normocytic, and in many respects it resembles the anemia associated with chronic infection. The patient with rheumatoid arthritis often responds poorly to orally administered iron. A number of studies have been carried out and various conclusio...

Tocilizumab is a humanized anti-IL-6 receptor monoclonal antibody, which binds to circulating soluble IL-6 receptor and membrane-expressed IL-6 receptor, inhibiting IL-6 binding to both forms of IL-6 receptor. Several Phase III clinical trials demonstrate the clinical efficacy of tocilizumab as monotherapy or with disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs for adult patients with moderately to seve...

For some time synovial fibroblasts have been regarded simply as innocent synovial cells, mainly responsible for synovial homeostasis. During the past decade, however, a body of evidence has accumulated illustrating that rheumatoid arthritis synovial fibroblasts (RASFs) are active drivers of joint destruction in rheumatoid arthritis. Details regarding the intracellular signalling cascades that r...

The ability of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) tomographic imaging to show a change in proton spin-lattice relaxation time (T1 value) in the joints of patients with rheumatoid arthritis before and after treatment with intra-articular steroid has been assessed. Six patients with seropositive rheumatoid arthritis and clinical evidence of a popliteal cyst were examined by both NMR tomography and ...

Ten patients with active rheumatoid arthritis were given a total dose infusion of iron dextran for anaemia. One had an immediate anaphylactoid reaction; the other nine had a brief exacerbation of arthralgia and joint dysfunction of up to seven days' duration. The erythrocyte sedimentation rate rose by an average of 23 mm. in one hour (Westergren), but this often took longer than seven days to s...

The C1q binding assay and the nephelometric monoclonal rheumatoid factor assay were able to discriminate 79% and 57% respectively of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients from healthy blood donors. In addition these assays could distinguish those patients with active arthritis from those with inactive disease, and the C1q binding assay correlated significantly with other laboratory indices of the ...

Background: Rheumatoid Arthritis and Chronic Periodontitis are two chronic inflammatory disorders which share a similar pathophysiology. Previously many studies have proposed a relationship between both the diseases. Therefore, the aim of the study was to explore the co-relation between grading of Rheumatoid arthritis and severity of chronic periodontitis in south Indian population. Material An...

rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic multi-system disease of unknown cause. it affects the people in their prime of life, predominantly between the ages of 20-50 years with unpredictable course. sudard is used in the ayurvedic system of medicine for the treatment of inflammation and pain associated with rheumatoid arthritis, osteo-arthritis, frozen shoulder, sciatica, ankylosing spondylitis and ch...