Testing Advances to Aid Rheumatoid Arthritis Management

There has been consistent recognition of the need for more objective, precise markers of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) disease progression risk to complement clinical assessments. Recent publications are indicating progress towards development of such tests that will improve monitoring and prediction of disease activity and can better inform treatment selection. Markers of RA disease susceptibility are also indicative of disease severity and treatment response to tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitor drugs, according to a study published April 28 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The HLA-DRB1 locus, previously tied to disease risk, was found tied to disease outcomes and may be used to better inform RA management, experts say. The United Kingdom-based researchers utilized data from three large prospective cohorts for discovery as well as validation. Sixteen different HLA-DRB1 haplotypes (amino acids at positions 11, 71, and 74) were evaluated, but the researchers found that the strongest association with radiological damage was seen in RA patients with valine at position 11 of HLA-DRB1. By the five-year follow-up, the percentages of patients with erosions of the hands and feet were: 48 percent of noncarriers of valine at position 11, 61 percent of heterozygote carriers, and 74 percent of homozygote […]