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HEALTH NEWS FEB. 15, 2024 / 11:22 AM
Rheumatoid arthritis drug abatacept may also prevent the disease
Abatacept eases symptoms and prevents joint damage in rheumatoid arthritis patients by dampening the immune system, researchers said.
Philip Day loved playing soccer so much that the 35-year-old software engineer founded a website — FootballMatcher.com — to help people connect for pickup games.
The fun went on pause when Day developed joint pain so bad it kept him from his favorite sport.
“The pain got so terrible I stopped going to football, and I got lazier and felt progressively worse physically and mentally,” Day, who lives in the London district of Eltham, said in a news release.
“The pain was unpredictable,” he recalled. “It would show up in my knees one day, my elbows the next, and then my wrists or even my neck.”
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But Day is now back to playing, thanks to a biologic drug that prevented him from developing full-blown rheumatoid arthritis.
Day participated in a clinical trial that showed the drug abatacept (Orencia) — which is already used to treat diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis — also can prevent people from progressing to the painful inflammatory disease.
Abatacept eases symptoms and prevents joint damage in rheumatoid arthritis patients by dampening the immune system, researchers said.
About 1.3 million Americans live with rheumatoid arthritis, which occurs when the body’s immune system starts attacking tissues in the joints, causing inflammation, pain, and swelling.
Day’s clinical trial showed that abatacept also is effective in preventing the onset of rheumatoid arthritis.
About 6% of patients treated with abatacept developed arthritis compared to 29% given a placebo following a year of treatment, according to clinical trial results published Tuesday in The Lancet.
“This is the largest rheumatoid arthritis prevention trial to date and the first to show that a therapy licensed for use in treating established rheumatoid arthritis is also effective in preventing the onset of disease in people at risk,” researcher Andrew Cope, head of the King’s College London Center for Rheumatic Diseases, said in a news release.
“These initial results could be good news for people at risk of arthritis, as we show that the drug not only prevents disease onset during the treatment phase but can also ease symptoms such as pain and fatigue,” he continued.
For the clinical trial, researchers recruited 213
