Romanian Society of Pharmaceutical Sciences

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EVALUATION OF TAPERING BIOLOGICAL THERAPY IN RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS

DIANA IOANA MANUELA TEAHA 1#, DOREL DULĂU 2#, DANIELA ELENA POPA 3*, GEORGE TRAIAN ALEXANDRU BURCEA-DRAGOMIROIU 3, ANNE-MARIE CIOBANU 3#, TIBERIU SEBASTIAN NEMETH 4

1Clinical County Emergency Hospital Oradea, 2 Corneliu Coposu Street, Oradea, Romania
2University of Oradea, Doctoral School of Biomedical Sciences, Medicine Field, 1 Universității Street, Oradea, Romania 3Department of Drug Control, Faculty of Pharmacy, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Bucharest, 6
Traian Vuia Street, Bucharest, Romania
4University of Oradea, Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, 29 Nicolae Jiga Street Oradea, Romania

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While it has been seen as a disease with a positive prognosis in the past, currently rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is labelled as a debilitating, progressive disease that causes substantial and crippling osteoarticular damage linked to increased premature mortality. Remission is increasingly faced with queries about the effective management of therapy due to newer generations of RA drugs (biological therapies), and the idea of minimizing or even halting their administration is a present and complex concept. Throughout this study, the objective was to assess the possibility of spacing biological therapy while maintaining the disease under control to ensure that patients benefit as completely as possible from a clinical outcome with less medication. The method used was pursuing by age distribution and the variation of activity scores of the disease DAS 28, respectively SDAI throughout 12 months, with 3 assessments: initially, at 6 and 12 months. After 12 months, the outcome of the two targeted therapies on the DAS 28 and SDAI score were statistically significant in both tapered and non-tapered groups.