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Adding Etanercept to Sulfasalazine, Hydroxychloroquine or Gold Improves Response in Rheumatoid Arthritis: Presented at ACR

By Jerry Ingram

ORLANDO, FL -- October 28, 2003 -- Patients with active rheumatoid arthritis appear to respond well when etanercept is added to sulfasalazine, hydroxychloroquine or gold. findings presented here on October 27^th at the American College of Rheumatology 67^th Annual Scientific Meeting.

Kara Petersen, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska, United States, and her team presented the findings.

"We noted a pretty significant response based on ACR 20, 50 and 70 scores somewhat similar to the data that are already available for etanercept," said Peterson. "So, this shows that it's efficacious, gives better control of the disease and it's safe."

Investigators enrolled 119 patients from the Rheumatoid Arthritis Investigational Network (RAIN) for this prospective, open-label study. All patients met ACR criteria for diagnosis with rheumatoid arthritis and had active disease in spite of treatment with sulfasalazine (n=50), hydroxychloroquine (n=50) or gold (n=19). After adding etanercept to the treatment regimen, investigators evaluated improvement in symptoms and disease activity according to ACR 20, ACR 50 and ACR 70 responses.

Primary endpoints were comprised of ACR scores at 24 and 48 weeks. Only those patients who met criteria for ACR 20 at 24 weeks continued into the second 24-week period. Safety was established at regularly scheduled visits.

According to the authors, "mean ACR 20 response was 67% at 24 weeks and 54% at 48 weeks for all etanercept combination groups." Also at 48 weeks, mean ACR 50 responses ranged from 37 to 42%, and mean ACR 70 ranged from 16 to 28% with combination therapy.

Overall, 25 patients stopped therapy before the end of the 48-week trial because of lack of efficacy, patient preference or protocol variations. Etanercept in combination with each drug was well tolerated, and discontinuation rate due to adverse events was only 9% at 48 weeks. There were no cases of tuberculosis or histoplasmosis.


[Study title: Etanercept in Combination with Sulfasalazine (SSA), Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), or Gold in the Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). Abstract 768]

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