Abstract
In the last decades the major progress in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis has occurred. Mainly thanks to the advances in biotechnology.
Since 1998, in addition, to basic, synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs, new generation drugs - biologics have been used in the treatment of patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. Biologics are drug that directly interfere with the pathogenic immune processes leading to disease progression.
The development of these new drugs has been enabled by better understanding of the pathogenesis of inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis, the function of cytokines, and immune system cells. Currently we use biologics either blocking some of inflammatory cytokines (anti-TNF, IL-1 and IL-6), or the cellular mechanisms (anti-CD20, CTLA-4).
There are many clinical trials in rheumatoid arthritis, which have verified clinical efficacy and ability of this treatment to practically stop radiographic progression. Negative aspects of the treatment still are some of the side effects and price.