medwireNews: EULAR has issued updated guidelines for the management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) using conventional, biologic, and targeted synthetic DMARDs.
Noting that the recommendations were last updated in 2016, Josef Smolen and co-authors say that “several new drugs have [since] been approved in Europe,” including the Janus kinase inhibitors tofacitinib and baricitinib, and the interleukin-6 receptor inhibitor sarilumab.
Based on systematic literature review and expert opinion, the guidelines include five overarching principles and 12 specific recommendations on pharmacologic treatment, including monotherapy and combination therapy approaches, treat-to-target strategies, and tapering when patients are in clinical remission. Smolen and team say that the “[l]evels of evidence and levels of agreement were mostly high.”
They say that adhering to the EULAR recommendations “will allow optimal treatment of patients with RA at the beginning of the third decade of this century.”
The recommendations are published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
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