Belgium-based researchers claim that a newly developed drug combination for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) treats the disease just as well as other intensive treatment strategies. The researchers claim the new drug requires less medication and produces fewer side effects at a significantly lower cost than current competing products.

Doctoral researcher Diederik De Cock (KU Leuven) describes the strategy in a new study published in Annals of Rheumatic Diseases.

No cure currently exists for RA, yet clinical studies reportedly show that intensive treatment of early RA can prevent joint damage and improve patients’ quality of life.

The researchers divided 290 early RA patients into three treatment groups. Each group received a different combination therapy: ‘COBRA Classic’ (methotrexate, sulfasalazine and a high first dose of glucocorticoids), ‘COBRA Slim’ (methotrexate and a moderate dose of glucocorticoids) or ‘COBRA Avant-Garde’ (methotrexate, leflunomide and a moderate dose of glucocorticoids).

All three strategies showed a similarly high efficacy: disease remission was achieved in 7 in 10 patients after 16 weeks of treatment. But the strategies varied significantly when it came to side effects.

A broader use of this strategy would lead to higher remission rates in the global early RA population and would probably reduce the need for expensive second-line antirheumatic treatment, say the researchers.

“One surprising finding in the study was the high remission values recorded for all of the applied intensive treatment strategies, which were unprecedented internationally,” says Diederik De Cock, doctoral researcher at the Research Centre for Skeletal Biology and Engineering (KU Leuven).

[Source:  Research Centre for Skeletal Biology and Engineering]