Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) can be a very painful and difficult disease to treat. RA is a chronic disease that affects over one million Americans, with more women developing than men.

It’s possible to have RA and not live with pain all the time. Some people have flares, times where the pain is difficult to manage alternating with time when it’s not too bad. Others live with the pain and disfigurement caused by the arthritis just about all the time.

With RA, the synovium (lining) of the joints becomes inflamed. This causes damage, which in turn causes pain and the disfigurement as the joints are shifted.

At first, treatment involves anti-inflammatory drugs to help keep the inflammation down in the joints, but for some people, the disease is so severe that this doesn’t help. Once they’ve tried just about every treatment available, their doctors may suggest that they try a medication called methotrexate.

Methotrexate was originally used as a chemotherapy drug for people with various types of cancer. It is a very powerful medication that must be monitored closely. However, researchers found that not only was methotrexate good for cancer treatments, it helped relieve the pain and disability of rheumatoid arthritis.

While this was good news, there was a lot of concern about the long-term effect of methotrexate in people who take it for RA. The good news is, a recent review of 88 studies on the topic has found that patients who took methotrexate over 2 years appeared to be doing well.

You can read more about the study and its findings in this article, Long-term methotrexate appears safe in arthritis.

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Image courtesy PhotoXpress.com

Canadians living with moderate-to-severe rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis or ankylosing spondylitis may benefit from a newly approved drug, golimumab (Simponi).

According to a press release issued by the manufacturer, Schering-Plough, the once monthly injection - alone or in combination with another drug, methotrexate, proved helpful in five different trials and patients who had rheumatoid or psoriatic arthritis, or ankylosing spondylitis found that, on average, their signs and symptoms had decreased.

Of course, this medication does have some side effects as all medications do, so doctors should be careful in prescribing golimumab. For example, patients with severe infections or who are allergic to latex shouldn’t take this mediation.

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Image: Newscom

According to a new study published in Arthritis Research & Therapy, a gluten-free vegan diet may improve symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, which is not only a debilitating condition on its own, but also associated with an increased risk of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and cardiovascular diseases.

A research team at Karolinska Institutet has shown in a new study that a gluten-free vegan diet has a beneficial effect on cardiovascular risk factors in people with rheumatoid arthritis. The effect was seen when a group of patients who kept to a gluten-free vegan diet for a year were compared with a control group which had followed ordinary dietary advice.

Vegan food had a positive effect on symptoms of the disease, which were more pronounced in the control group. Blood levels of oxidised LDL-cholesterol, a risk factor for atherosclerosis, were also lower in the group which kept to the vegan diet. The vegan group also had higher levels of anti-PC, a type of antibody that the researchers believe has a protective effect against atherosclerosis.

Vegan, or thinking of going vegan/vegetarian? Be sure to check out Jul’s Veggie Chic blog.

Turmeric is a spice that features a lot in Asian, particularly Indian, cuisine. But aside from its use in flavoring food, it is also widely sold as a dietary supplement supposedly to treat a wide variety of ailments, including arthiritis.

However, nobody knows whether they are really effective, and what dosage is necessary.

Researchers from the University of Arizona set out to determine whether (and how) turmeric works as an anti-arthritic using animal models.

Dr. Funk and her colleagues then tested in animal models a whole extract of turmeric root, only the essential oils, and an oil-depleted extract containing the three major curcuminoids found in the rhizome. Of the three extracts, the one containing the major curcuminoids was most similar in chemical composition to commercially available turmeric dietary supplements. It also was the most effective, completely inhibiting the onset of rheumatoid arthritis.

How does turmeric work?

The researchers found that the curcuminoid extract inhibits a transcription factor called NF-KB from being activated in the joint. A transcription factor is a protein that controls when genes are switched on or off. Once the transcription factor NF-KB is activated, or turned on, it binds to genes and enhances production of inflammatory proteins, destructive to the joint.

Based on this, the researchers say that it appear that turmeric works in the same way as other anti-arthritic pharmaceuticals currently being developed, which target NF-KB.

What about the dosage?

Read more