Seminars in arthritis and rheumatism
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Semin. Arthritis Rheum. · Oct 2009
Review Meta AnalysisTreatment with infliximab plus methotrexate improves anemia in patients with rheumatoid arthritis independent of improvement in other clinical outcome measures-a pooled analysis from three large, multicenter, double-blind, randomized clinical trials.
To evaluate the effect of antitumor necrosis factor-alpha monoclonal antibody infliximab treatment on anemia in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). ⋯ Treatment with infliximab plus MTX significantly improved hemoglobin level among anemic RA patients when compared with treatment with placebo plus MTX, even after adjusting for improvement in disease activity.
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Semin. Arthritis Rheum. · Oct 2009
ReviewSystemic nonarticular manifestations of rheumatoid arthritis: focus on inflammatory mechanisms.
Extra-articular ("nonarticular") manifestations of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are common and greatly affect physical and emotional health, as well as prognosis, including survival. Several plausible mechanisms have been advanced for many nonarticular manifestations but there is increasing evidence that pro-inflammatory cytokines (eg, tumor necrosis factor-alpha [TNF-alpha], interleukin [IL]-1, and IL-6) are also involved. The purpose of this review is to provide a concise appraisal of recent studies investigating the involvement of inflammatory cytokines in the pathogenesis of nonarticular RA manifestations. ⋯ Overall, further research in this area will add to our understanding of the mechanisms of extra-articular manifestations in RA patients. These insights should allow clinicians to select therapies to better match the spectrum of joint disease and nonarticular manifestations in individual patients. This may be particularly relevant for newer biologic agents with specific inhibitory effects on cytokines such as TNF-alpha and IL-6.