Ihurt
02-28-2006, 08:20 AM
As some here may know I also belong to another arthritis group-have been for a couple of years. They also share information when they get it. The administrators of the group are RN's and I asked their permission to post this article since there have been so many questions about Methotrexate here lately. They were glad to oblige, so I hope this is oke with everyone else.
Elaine
ARTICLE:
Methotrexate Fights Rheumatoid Arthritis Second Time Around
THURSDAY, Feb. 23 (HealthDay News) -- A second course of the drug methotrexate can still prove effective in rheumatoid arthritis patients who didn't respond to the drug the first time around, Austrian researchers report.
Investigators at the Medical University of Vienna also found that a second treatment was particularly effective in patients who received low doses of the drug in their first treatment.
Methotrexate is the most commonly used drug to treat rheumatoid arthritis .
The study, published in the Feb. 23 issue of Arthritis Research & Therapy, involved 79 patients who had a second methotrexate treatment that lasted at least a year. The patients had stopped their first treatment due to side effects, or because it was ineffective.
Of these 79 patients, 42 (53.2 percent) went on to gain benefit from an effective second treatment. Of those patients, 23 had stopped their first treatment because it was ineffective and 16 had stopped their first treatment due to side effects.
The second treatment was more than twice as likely to be effective in patients who had received a low dose (10 milligrams or less per week) in their first treatment than in patients who received a high dose (more than 17.5 milligrams per week) in their first treatment.
The findings suggest that renewed use of methotrexate may be an option for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis patients who failed to respond to their first treatment with the drug, the researchers said.
-- Robert Preidt
SOURCE: BioMed Central, news release, Feb. 23, 2006
Elaine
ARTICLE:
Methotrexate Fights Rheumatoid Arthritis Second Time Around
THURSDAY, Feb. 23 (HealthDay News) -- A second course of the drug methotrexate can still prove effective in rheumatoid arthritis patients who didn't respond to the drug the first time around, Austrian researchers report.
Investigators at the Medical University of Vienna also found that a second treatment was particularly effective in patients who received low doses of the drug in their first treatment.
Methotrexate is the most commonly used drug to treat rheumatoid arthritis .
The study, published in the Feb. 23 issue of Arthritis Research & Therapy, involved 79 patients who had a second methotrexate treatment that lasted at least a year. The patients had stopped their first treatment due to side effects, or because it was ineffective.
Of these 79 patients, 42 (53.2 percent) went on to gain benefit from an effective second treatment. Of those patients, 23 had stopped their first treatment because it was ineffective and 16 had stopped their first treatment due to side effects.
The second treatment was more than twice as likely to be effective in patients who had received a low dose (10 milligrams or less per week) in their first treatment than in patients who received a high dose (more than 17.5 milligrams per week) in their first treatment.
The findings suggest that renewed use of methotrexate may be an option for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis patients who failed to respond to their first treatment with the drug, the researchers said.
-- Robert Preidt
SOURCE: BioMed Central, news release, Feb. 23, 2006