DMARDS

Hi everyone! As you may have seen after reading the articles this week on arthritis there is no cure. But there are treatments that help with the symptoms. There was one that was mentioned but not really discussed and that was DMARD. The acronym was thrown out there, but not really explained. So DMARD stands for Disease-modifying antirheumatic drug. This is a family of drugs that are used to slow the progression of rheumatoid arthritis. Although RA was the disease it was propagated for, many other diseases have had a response to them. Interestingly enough, Crohn's Disease is included in this list along with lupus. Ulcerative Colitis was not included though.

DMARDS include a vast array of drugs used for different purposes. There are thirteen drugs, which are used by different mechanisms. There were three that really caught my eye and they were adalimumab, etanercept, and infliximab. The three of these drugs treat RA by TNF inhibitor. Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF) is thought to be a major contributor to RA for TNF alpha causes both cell damage and inhibits superoxide dismutases in the cell (SOD1). TNF inhibitors eliminate abnormal B cell activity which cause the apoptosis trigger by TNF alpha.
For more information on DMARDs:

http://www.webmd.com/rheumatoid-arthritis/guide/dmard-rheumatoid-arthritis-treatment