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Disease-Modifying Anti-rheumatic Drugs

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Nijkamp and Parnham's Principles of Immunopharmacology

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Abstract

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is the most common inflammatory rheumatic disease, with a worldwide prevalence of about 1%. Targeting the synovial membrane, cartilage and bone, untreated RA leads to joint destruction, disability and increased mortality. Although the total incidence of this disease is low, the level of ill health and economic burden is significant with the patients often partially or totally unemployed. Generally, the patients require long-term drug treatment and non-pharmacological approaches such as physiotherapy and psychosocial support. There are no reliably curative or disease-remitting therapies, although considerable gains have been made utilizing biologic therapies and novel small molecules to target specific CYTOKINES (TUMOUR NECROSIS FACTOR (TNF) and INTERLEUKINS such as IL-1, IL-6, IL-12/IL-23 and IL-17), cellular subsets (B CELLS, TH17 CELLS) and immune regulatory steps in RA (JANUS KINASE (JAK) pathway).

Final manuscript submitted on May 31, 2017.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Kevin D. Pile

  2. School of Medical Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Garry G. Graham & Richard O. Day

  3. Department of Clinical Pharmacology, St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Garry G. Graham & Richard O. Day

  4. Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Stephen M. Mahler

Authors
  1. Kevin D. Pile
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  2. Garry G. Graham
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  3. Stephen M. Mahler
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  4. Richard O. Day
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Correspondence to Garry G. Graham .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Translational Drug Validation, Fraunhofer IME-TMP and Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Michael J. Parnham

  2. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Frans P. Nijkamp

  3. The Queen’s Medical Research Institute, MRC Centre for Inflammation Research, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Adriano G. Rossi

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Pile, K.D., Graham, G.G., Mahler, S.M., Day, R.O. (2019). Disease-Modifying Anti-rheumatic Drugs. In: Parnham, M., Nijkamp, F., Rossi, A. (eds) Nijkamp and Parnham's Principles of Immunopharmacology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10811-3_34

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