ARTHRITIS FIX A JOINT EFFORT!
A DRUG used to treat rheumatoid arthritis (RA) also appears to prevent the crippling disease!
King’s College London researchers investigated whether giving the medication abatacept to people at a high risk of developing the arthritis would prevent the disease.
In the study, only 6 percent of the participants who received the drug developed full-blown arthritis, while 29 percent of people who received a placebo got the disease.
The benefits were evident even after two years, when 25 percent of recipients had developed RA versus 37 percent of people in the placebo group. RA, a chronic and often debilitating inflammatory disease, causes joints to feel stiff, swollen and tender. Patients may also experience fatigue and loss of appetite as well as problems with their eyes, lungs and heart. It affects about 1.5 million people in the U.S.
“This is the largest RA prevention trial to date and the first to show a therapy treating RA is also effective in preventing it in people at risk,” says King’s College London professor of rheumatology Andrew Cope.