Gene therapy in rheumatoid arthritis: how to target joint destruction?

Excerpt

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic, inflammatory disorder that affects primarily the joints and causes significant disability to affected individuals. Although the recent years have brought exciting new information to researchers and clinicians alike, the treatment of the disease still constitutes a major challenge. Most patients require a combination of different medications, including nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, early and aggressive application of disease modifying anti-rheumatics, and steroids. Using such regimens, slowing of disease progression can be observed in some patients, but frequently the treatment fails to achieve satisfactory results. Specifically, the progressive destruction of articular cartilage and bone is barely influenced at all by most of the approaches that we use routinely today. This is of particular concern because the joint destruction not only constitutes a most prominent feature of disease, but also determines its outcome in the majority of patients. …