New rheumatoid arthritis drug has poor results in trials

 A drug hope in the rheumatoid arthritis arena – fostamatinib – has had disappointing results in clinical trials.

Fostamatinib is a potential competitor to injectable drugs such as AbbVie’s Humira and a pill from Pfizer called Xeljanz.

But increased blood pressure and diarrhoea were again noted in patients taking the AstraZeneca product so its future is extremely uncertain. Its side effects are worse than drugs currently available and results of another study found fostamatinib was inferior to Humira in controlling arthritis symptoms.