Replies to post #2621 on Entremed (ENMD)

[docaaron1]

nottadoc, thanks for the article. Earlier today I was reading an article on the link between rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and heart disease. So now if you have a patient with rheumatoid arthritis I would think that one would want to prescribe a drug that treats the RA and protects the heart over all other present day RA drugs.

Aaron

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050708/HTAYLOR08/TPHealth/
(Article below "Children's Sleeping Habits"...)
"Arthritis double whammy ---People with rheumatoid arthritis appear to have a double curse. Not only are they afflicted with a potentially crippling disease, but they may be prone to early heart attacks as well.

Rheumatoid arthritis is an auto-immune disease. The disease-fighting immune system becomes confused and turns on the body itself, attacking tissue around the joints. Over time, a rheumatoid-arthritis patient can be crippled by the damage done during this inflammatory process.

Now researchers suspect this misguided inflammatory response could also play a role in heart disease. The same overactive immune cells which are ravaging joints, appear to be wreaking havoc on blood vessels. This chronic inflammation might be setting the stage for an early heart attack.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota recently reviewed the cases of arthritis patients who had been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease and compared them to non-arthritis patients. They found that arthritis patients had far more advanced cardiovascular disease at the time of diagnosis, compared with other heart patients.

The research team, led by Dr. Kenneth Warrington, concluded that the rheumatoid arthritis was likely accelerating the cardiovascular disease. The study was published in the journal Arthritis Research and Therapy."