Gene therapy: the future of rheumatoid arthritis treatment?

Advances in gene therapy will open new safe and effective treatment options for people with rheumatoid arthritis in the future, scientists outline in the Journal of Cellular Physiology.

Although biologic drugs do suppress proinflammatory cytokine activities, they are usually accompanied by suppression of the immune system, which is bad news for other aspects of health. Current drugs don’t work for everybody and are expensive.

So researchers have been focusing on gene transferring methods in animal models and are looking at different strategies for selecting effective genes for rheumatoid arthritis gene therapy. It’s an exciting area to work in and could make a major difference to how diseases are treated. Dr M Zavvar, who is involved in the work, comments:

“The future looks bright for gene therapy as a new method in the clinical treatment of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, and by ongoing efforts in this field, we hope to achieve feasible, safe, and effective treatment methods.”

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