Biological therapies relieve the symptoms of Ankylosing Spondylitis

Feb. 24, 2010 - PRLog -- Biological therapies, also known as anti-TNF (blocking drugs Tumor Necrosis Factor-TNF), which have recently begun to be administered in patients with ankylosing spondylitis, are providing very positive results in patients so far found no answer in any treatment conventional, as several experts have said this weekend during the XIX Congress of the Andalusian Society of Rheumatology  in Punta Umbria (Huelva).

According to Dr. Jose Luis Andreu, a member of the Rheumatology Service of the Hospital Universitario Puerta de Hierro in Madrid, "40% of patients currently suffering from Ankylosing Spondylitis  was not until now no treatment, usually associated with conducting a physical therapy and the administration of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) that relieve the symptoms of the disease. " However, administration of anti-TNF drugs that act by reducing inflammation by interfering with molecules that maintain or worsen the disease, quality of life of these patients get better, for the first time significantly.

Ankylosing Spondylitis, which is characterized by a strong back pain and stiffness in the spine, affects 0.5% of the population (about 200,000) and very significant impact on quality of life of sufferers.

For Dr. Andreu, who has participated in the meeting with the paper SAR Anti-TNF Therapy in Ankylosing Spondylitis: the reality of the dream symptomatic control and structural control, "but it has shown great improvement that the anti - TNF pose to the symptoms of the disease, has yet been able to prove that entail a change in their structural development and therefore in the evolution of Ankylosing Spondylitis.

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In this regard, Dr. Andreu has said that the problem could be that, until recently, the anti-TNF administered in developmental periods of the disease later, "so for another two or three years we can not really sure whether this type of biological therapy may eventually change the structural development of the disease. "

The importance of maintaining biological treatmentDr. José Luis Fernandez Sueiro, member of the Rheumatology Service in Hospital Juan Canalejo of A Coruna, which has submitted the paper Controversies in the patterns of use of biological treatments in the spondyloarthropathies. How long will we try?, Explained that it has been shown that interruption of this treatment represents a recurrence of symptoms, both in the case of ankylosing spondylitis and in psoriatic arthritis.

In his view, is still a costly treatment and an adjusted risk-benefit balance, one of the main questions arising about the application of these biological therapies is whether they should be discontinued at some point and what happens to it.

In this sense, the expert noted that the treatment is stopped "in most patients, symptoms recur after a few months, but has also been observed that in doing so and, later, to re-enter the same treatment, it does not lose effectiveness, since the patient's response is very similar to the initial. With these data, currently treatment with anti-TNF agents in these patients should be kept in a chronic

At the meeting of the SAR, which brought together about 150 rheumatologists, as well as these issues have been addressed recent advances in rheumatic disease and the current status and future of both the detection and treatment of these diseases.

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Ankylosing spondylitis is a type of arthritis that mainly affects the spine, and can affect the
hips, and certain soft tissues.Ankylosing Spondylitis is one of the more common forms of
arthritis affecting about 0.5% of the population.
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