A clinical trial showed that the drug abatacept (Orencia) – which is already used to treat diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis – also can prevent people from progressing to the painful inflammatory disease.
Abatacept eases symptoms and prevents joint damage in rheumatoid arthritis patients by dampening the immune system, researchers said.
About 1.3 million Americans live with rheumatoid arthritis, which occurs when the body’s immune system starts attacking tissues in the joints, causing inflammation, pain and swelling.
Day’s clinical trial showed that abatacept also is effective in preventing the onset of rheumatoid arthritis.
About 6% of patients treated with abatacept developed arthritis compared to 29% given a placebo following a year of treatment, according to clinical trial results published Feb. 13 in The Lancet.
“This is the largest rheumatoid arthritis prevention trial to date and the first to show that a therapy licensed for use in treating established rheumatoid arthritis is also effective in preventing the onset of disease in people at risk,” researcher Andrew Cope, head of the King’s College London Center for Rheumatic Diseases, said in a news release.
“These initial results could be good news for people at risk of arthritis, as we show that the drug not only prevents disease onset during the treatment phase but can also ease symptoms such as pain and fatigue,” he continued.
For the clinical trial, researchers recruited 213 patients older than 18 at high risk of rheumatoid arthritis. They all had early symptoms like joint pain, but no swelling that would lead to a formal diagnosis.
Rheumatoid arthritis most often begins in middle age, but also can affect much younger adults, researchers said.
“Enrolling in the trial was a no-brainer; it was a ray of hope at a dark time,” Day said.
Half of the participants were treated with abatacept and the other half with a placebo every week for a year. The drug is given by weekly injections at home or in a hospital via an IV drip.
After a year of treatment, the drug was stopped and patients were monitored to see how many would develop rheumatoid arthritis.
After the full two years, 25% of abatacept patients had progressed to rheumatoid arthritis compared with 37% of those on a placebo.
“The results clearly show that during the treatment period almost all individuals receiving the biologic drug showed no symptoms or signs of RA compared with the control population,” Ravinder Maini, an emeritus professor of rheumatology at Imperial College London who was not involved in the research, said of the clinical trial.
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