Corticosteroids, such as prednisone (Deltasone and other brand names), reduce inflammation. They also may slow joint damage, although whether they do this is controversial. However, they have little lasting benefit and come with a long list of troubling side effects, such as easy bruising, thinning of the bones, cataracts, weight gain, puffy face, diabetes and high blood pressure, among others. If you do use corticosteroids, follow your doctor's recommendations closely. Your doctor may prescribe a corticosteroid to relieve occasional flare-ups, and then gradually taper you off the medication. Stopping corticosteroid therapy suddenly can be dangerous.
Disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (called DMARDs, second-line drugs or remittive therapies) appear to slow or halt the progression of rheumatoid arthritis by altering the function of your body's immune system. Most experts recommend that all people with rheumatoid arthritis take a DMARD soon after being diagnosed to reduce the chances of joint damage.
These drugs include methotrexate (Folex, Methotrexate LPF, Rheumatrex), hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil) or sulfasalazine (Azulfidine). Each of these comes with a small risk of serious side effects. Your doctors will review them with you.
Newer medications include leflunomide (Arava) in pill form, and abatacept (Orencia), adalimumab (Humira), etanercept (Enbrel), infliximab (Remicade)Â and rituximab (Rituxan) by injection. These can be highly effective, but because they are new and more expensive, most doctors recommend other treatments first. Another of the newest medical therapies approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for rheumatoid arthritis is anakinra (Kineret), an injectable drug that appears to be only modestly effective but may be a reasonable option if other treatments have failed. Other therapies include minocycline (Minocin), cyclosporine (Neoral, Sandimmune), immunoadsorption (a blood-filtering procedure), gold and penicillamine (Cuprimine, Depen), although these treatments are used much less often because most experts find that they are not as effective or safe
Previous Section
