Blocking Tumor Necrosis Factor Offers Hope in Rheumatoid Arthritis

摘要

I inherited from my family-physician fa-ther-in-law medical texts used when he was a young doctor, and find it salutary to dip into them from time to time, especially when some breakthrough is hinted at. "For patients with rheumatoid arthrititis, a new era in treatment has begun"—this from an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine of March 16, 2000, by Dr. David S. Pisetsky (see New Engl. J. Med., 342: 810-1, 2000) had me reaching for the shelves. Therein I found the expected mix of optimism and ignorance. Crippling pain and deformity "with little or no prospect of relief " was entirely the wrong picture of a disease probably caused by a low-grade infection," opined one physician in 1937. Even 12 years earlier another had declared the outlook "not so hopeless as was once thought" though he had to admit that the "suggestive therapeutics of hope and confidence are more valuable than drugs."