Rheumatology Research News

The American College of Rheumatology recently held their annual scientific meeting. All of the abstracts from research are available online.

Lots of articles have been in the press recently with short snippets of information from the meeting. Notably, several new biologic drugs are showing promise in clinical trials, including two that have been specifically targeted at Psoriatic arthritis: Golimumab and Ustekinumab. The former is another TNF-alpha inhibitor (like Remicade, Enbrel and Humira). The latter is the first interleukin 12/23 inhibitor to show promise in the treatment of Psoriatic Arthritis.

Golimumab has also been in trials for Ankylosing Spondylitis.

It's nice to see the less common rheumatic diseases being targeted in clinical trials as opposed to getting drugs that worked for rheumatoid arthritis applied as afterthoughts.