People recently diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis appear to benefit more from Enbrel treatment than patients with long-standing arthritis, researchers report.

Dr. Scott W. Baumgartner of the University of Alabama at Birmingham colleagues note in the Journal of Rheumatology that prevention of disability is an important goal of arthritis therapy.

To determine how Enbrel might differ in this regard in patients with different durations of disease, the researchers followed two groups of patients who began treatment with the drug.

One group of 207 patients had had arthritis for an average of a year and had not been given methotrexate. The other group consisted of 464 patients who had had the condition for an average of 12 years and who had not responded to methotrexate or other so-called disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs.

Scores from questionnaires designed to assess the participants’ function and disability were obtained at the start of the study and over the course of three years.

Both groups of patients showed rapid and sustained clinical responses with Enbrel therapy. However, there was a significantly greater improvement in questionnaire scores in the recent-onset group.

This difference was seen as early as two weeks after the starting Enbrel, say the investigators, and “persisted throughout the 3-year time frame.”

Moreover, at the end of the study, 26 percent of recent-onset patients had the desirable score of zero, compared to 14 percent of those with established disease, a significant difference.

The researchers conclude that the results support prompt treatment of rheumatoid arthritis “to minimize patient disability.”

SOURCE: Journal of Rheumatology, August 2004.