Fighting Back With Disease-Modifying Drugs (DMARDS)
There are a variety of medications that work by altering the immune system function to halt the underlying processes that cause certain forms of inflammatory arthritis including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), ankylosing spondylitis, and psoriatic arthritis. These are called disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs or DMARDs for short.
These drugs not only treat arthritis symptoms, but they also can slow down progressive joint destruction.
Many types of drugs are DMARDs. Traditional drugs of this type include:
- Anti-malaria medications, particularly Plaquenil
- Organ antirejection drugs, such as cyclosporine
- Miscellaneous drugs, such as Azulfidine and gold
- Chemotherapy drugs, such as methotrexate, Imuran, and Cytoxan
- Arava
The most commonly used DMARD is methotrexate. For more information, see the article on methotrexate and other chemotherapy drugs used for arthritis. This article concentrates on other DMARDs. For more on biologics, see the article on new arthritis treatments.
Some of these medications are traditionally used to treat other conditions such as cancer or inflammatory bowel disease, or to reduce the risk of rejection of a transplanted organ. However, when chemotherapy medications (such as methotrexate or Cytoxan) are used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, the doses are significantly lower and the risks of side effects tend to be considerably less than when prescribed in higher doses for cancer treatment.
Over the past several years, researchers have developed newer DMARDs that more specifically target the immune system and have fewer side effects. These are called biological response modifiers or biologics. They include: Enbrel, Humira, Kineret, and Remicade.
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