When and how to stop etanercept after successful treatment of patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis

F H M Prince¹, M Twilt^1,2, S C M Simon¹, M A J van Rossum³, W Armbrust⁴, E P A H Hoppenreijs⁵, S Kamphuis¹, M van Santen-Hoeufft⁶, Y Koopman-Keemink⁷, N M Wulffraat⁸, R ten Cate², L W A van Suijlekom-Smit¹

¹ Department of Paediatrics/Paediatric Rheumatology, Erasmus MC Sophia Children’s Hospital, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
² Department of Paediatrics/Paediatric Rheumatology, Leiden University Medical Centre, The Netherlands
³ Department of Paediatrics/Paediatric Rheumatology, Emma Children’s Hospital AMC and Jan van Breemen Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
⁴ Department of Paediatrics/Paediatric Rheumatology, Beatrix Children’s Hospital, University Medical Centre Groningen, The Netherlands
⁵ Department of Paediatrics/Paediatric Rheumatology, University Nijmegen Medical Centre Radboud, The Netherlands
⁶ Department of Internal Medicine, subdivision Rheumatology, Maastricht University Medical Centre, The Netherlands
⁷ Department of Paediatrics, Hagaziekenhuis Juliana Children’s Hospital, Den Haag, The Netherlands
⁸ Department of Paediatrics/Paediatric Rheumatology, Utrecht MC Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital, The Netherlands

Correspondence to:
F H M Prince, Department of Paediatrics, Sp 1546, Erasmus MC Sophia Children’s Hospital, PO Box 2060, 3000 CB Rotterdam, The Netherlands; f.prince@erasmusmc.nl

Accepted 22 September 2008

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Currently, little is known about when or how to stop etanercept in patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) when a good clinical response is reached, and therefore no guidelines are available.¹ We evaluated the disease course of patients with JIA who discontinued etanercept because of a sustained good clinical response.

This study is embedded in the Arthritis and Biologicals in Children (ABC) project, a prospective ongoing multicentre, observational study that includes all Dutch patients with JIA who used etanercept since 1999.^{2 3} We selected all patients who discontinued etanercept because of sustained good clinical response determined by the treating doctor. The outcome measures to assess disease activity consisted of the JIA core set of six response variables.⁴ To evaluate the disease course we used the criteria for inactive disease on medication (IDM) or off medication (ID) and the criteria for clinical remission on medication (CRM) or off medication (CR) by Wallace.^{5 6} . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?