Uso de fármacos modificadores de la enfermedad en artritis reumatoide

Resum

Treatment of rheumatoid arthritis has change because of recognition that joint damage occurs early in the course of disease, that long disease duration lessens the probability of response to treatment and difficulties to define individual patterns of risk. Therefore, any individual with active disease should be treated with disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) as soon as possible. The goal is to achieve remission of disease or a state of minimum inflammatory activity. DMARDs are slow acting drugs that prevent or slow progression of structural damage. There are not many clinical trials comparing safety and efficacy of DMARDs among them, and cost/effectiveness studies are also rare. Non-biologic DMARDs modulate immune response thorough a wide range of action mechanisms not always well documented. Biologic DMARDs are antibodies or fusion proteins with a specific action over a specific target promoting blockage of a molecule, its receptor, or lysis of a cellular subgroup.