A Three Year Retrospective Analysis Of Anti-Tnf Treatment Outcomes In Rheumatoid Arthritis And Ankylosing Spondylitis Patients

AbstractBackground/Aims:To investigate the effectiveness and reliability of anti-TNF treatment in Ankylosing Spondylitis-Rheumatoid arthritis patients.Methods:180 patients (110 Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients diagnosed according to 1987 American Rheumatism Association criteria, 70 Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) patients diagnosed according to Modified NewYork Criteria) admitted to the hospital for arthritis and related compliants who were followed up and treated with anti-TNF treatment in the department of Rheumatology&Immunology from 2009 to 2011. We enrolled 100 patients with RA (76 women, 24 men) and 60 patients with AS (16 women, 44 men) to the study, excluded 20 patients according to the exclusion criterias. The response of the patients to the anti-TNF treatment was evaluated by comparing the clinical parameters BASDAI, DAS28 and VAS score; and laboratory measurements of erytrocyte sedimentation rate, C-reactive protein levels of rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis before and six months after the treatment.Results:After the six months of anti Tnf treatment, BASDAI score for AS, DAS28 score for RA, VAS, ESR and CRP levels for both diseases showed a statistically significant improvement, moreover it was determined that demographic variations did not affect these values.Conclusions: Our results demonstrated that anti-TNF treatment is safe and effective treatment modality in patients with Ankylosing Spondylitis and Rheumatoid arthritis. These findings are short-term results of a study, and therefore future studies with larger patient series and long term follow-up are needed to look at outcomes of long term therapies