'Life cycle in modern rheumatology' matters: new drugs require new therapeutic strategies and innovative diagnostics.

摘要

In this issue of Current Opinion in Rheumatology, a number of articles by experts in the field have been compiled. They formulated their current perspectives of clinical management of important inflammatory and noninflammatory disorders of our rheumatologic patients. There are very interesting forces that apparently drive our discipline. On one hand, they represent innovative new drugs as nicely demonstrated by newer biologies on the horizon (Finckh and Gabay, pp. 316-322) as well as very promising small molecules targeting intracellular signaling pathways (Stanczyk etal., pp. 304-309) that are entering clinical development; it is also important and still fascinating to re-evaluate the clinical role of classical disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) with methotrexate still representing the gold standard in treating rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients (Nandi et a/., pp. 298-303). Interestingly, the evidence that methotrexate would have superior efficacy compared with leflunomide or sulfasalazineis not clearly supported by previous studies in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients.