Dear All,
Highlight of this issue is the study conducted by Fischer et al., ‘Combined inhibition of tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-17 as a therapeutic opportunity in rheumatoid arthritis: Development and characterization of a novel bispecific antibody’ published in Arthritis Rheumatology 2015 Jan issue. In this study, Fischer et al. investigated whether combined inhibition of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-17 (IL-17) has additive or synergistic effect in the suppression of mesenchymal cell activation and inflammation.
The study investigators found that combined blockade of TNF-α and IL-17 was more effective than single blockade in inhibiting cytokine, chemokine and matrix enzyme responses from human mesenchymal cells and in blocking tissue destruction associated with arthritis in TNF-α-transgenic mice and additionally showed a positive impact on rebalance of bone homeostasis. While by itself, this is a great finding, there are two issues: Safety, as this would involve using two biologics in effect (which previously has been shown to have much greater adverse effects) and reproducibility of the results in humans.
There is a special request to go through the patients’ perspective, as we have included some queries from the Sjögren’s India support group to have some information about the disease from rheumatologists in our country.
We sincerely request all members to post their questions to us, so that we can put those questions to the experts.
We welcome your suggestions to improve this IRA activity. Please post your suggestions/comments on iraenewsleter@hotmail.com
Regards,
Banwari Sharma
Editor, IRA e-Newsletter
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