Excellent Modern Treatments For Rheumatoid Arthritis

The most common and problematic form of inflammatory arthritis is rheumatoid arthritis. It causes massive joint inflammation and pain when cells of the body’s own immune system attack the joints. Three in every ten thousand are affected by the disease every year, and women about four times as much as men.

Modern treatments are available and viable, however, and you should know the options. These treatments can work to improve quality of life, slow disease progression, and prevent work disability. The newest treatments you should know about are in four different categories: Non-pharmacological treatments, pharmacological drugs, biologics, and Prosorba column therapy.

Non-pharmacological treatment

Non-pharmacological treatments focus on relieving the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis by strengthening your body against the disease or preventing symptoms of the disease from displaying in the first place by changing your environment. These include therapies such as physiotherapy and occupational therapy.

Pharmacological drugs

Analgesics are used to relieve the pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis. They can allow you to complete your daily activities without any pain by numbing pain receptors in your joints, but they do not actually treat the disease.

Anti-inflammatory medications are used much like analgesics to relieve the pain of the arthritis. However, they are also important to take for arthritis because they reduce the inflammation which can cause further joint damage.

Steroids are used to reduce the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. Steroids are signalling molecules which can signal cells in your body to change their biochemistry.

‘Disease modifying antirheumatic drugs’ are used in an attempt to target and eliminate the underlying cause of symptoms, or what is thought to be a cause of symptoms. They can have more serious side-effects than other drugs used for rheumatoid arthritis, but they may be required to prevent long-term damage.

Biologics

In a disease like rheumatoid arthritis, immune signalling molecules in your body called ‘cytokines’ are imbalanced. If this balance could be corrected, immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis could be halted, theoretically.

Biologics are a new and promising class of medicines which, in the case of rheumatoid arthritis, can target immune signalling molecules and eliminate them from your system. This causes your immune system to stop attacking your joints and sends the disease into remission.

Prosorba Column Therapy

It is a last measure and is not widely used because the procedure is complicated, but it is actually just like dialysis for rheumatoid arthritis patients. Instead of filtering the blood for toxins, the blood is filtered for harmful antibodies, however.

The joint symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis are caused by damaging antibodies manufactured by the immune system which attack the joints. Removal of these antibodies would therefore be very beneficial in treatment. The column contains silica and an antibody-binding protein called Protein A.