Conference paper

Optimizing rheumatoid arthritis treatment with rituximab - individualized patient approach

Srđan Novak ; Department for Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, Clinic for Internal Medicine, Clinical Hospital Centre Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia

Abstract

Disease activity assessment is a cornerstone of monitoring rheumatoid arthritis (RA) development and guidance for rituximab treatment. Beside clinical signs and symptoms biomarkers (RF and anti-CCP) are important early predictors of response to therapy and they can predict disease development. Autoantibody (RF and anti-CCP) seropositivity has been associated with positive response to rituximab (RTX) in antiTNF-IR patients, DMARD-IR patients and MTX-naive patients. Selecting therapy for TNF-IR patients providing most likely response it should be taken in consideration results form recently published assessments demonstrating for RTX treated patients significant improvement in DAS28 from baseline versus alternative TNF inhibitor treatment. Recently published NICE treatment guideline is recommending upon antiTNF failure RTX treatment (in combination with MTX) instead antiTNF cycling.

Keywords

biological agents; rituximab; rheumatoid arthritis; RF; anti-CCP; plasma cells

Hrčak ID:

124668

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/124668

Publication date:

14.10.2010.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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