Testing arthritis drugs against each other to save £20m a year

HUNDREDS of arthritis sufferers are to take part in a groundbreaking trial that will improve treatment and potentially save the NHS up to £20million a year.

The trial will involve pitting two drugs used to combat rheumatoid arthritis against each other for the first time to find out which is the most effective.

The charity Arthritis Research UK has funded the 1m trial, pointing to the "traditional unwillingness" of pharmaceutical companies to test their drugs against competing products.

More than 300 patients will take part in the trial of the two drugs, anti-TNF therapy, and Rituximab. Both drugs target the immune system, but work in a slightly different way.

Dr Duncan Porter, a consultant rheumatologist at Glasgow's Gartnavel hospital, who is leading the study, said the trial would also examine if it is possible to predict in advance which patients will do better on which drug. He said: "At the moment, predicting a patient's response to a drug in advance is complete trial and error, but if we could do this it would prevent patients unnecessarily going on drugs that will not work for them.

"We know these two treatments work, but we don't have very good evidence about which works better, or about which offers the NHS better value for money."

The cost of anti-TNF therapy is 9,000-10,000 a year per patient. Rituximab, meanwhile, costs around, 4,000 to 7,000. Were the latter to prove just as effective as the former, Porter said the NHS could save up to 20m a year.

Professor Alan Silman, medical director of Arthritis Research UK, said: "This research is a very exciting and important development, which will be of enormous benefit not only to patients but also to the NHS and other funders of these very effective but expensive new therapies for rheumatoid arthritis."

There are around 60,000 people in Scotland with rheumatoid arthritis, an auto-immune, chronic, progressive disease that attacks the joints, most commonly in the hands, feet and wrists.

Research published last month by the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society found that thousands of people have been forced to give up working due to the condition.

The study of Scots sufferers found that more than half said the condition had forced them to give up employment prematurely.

Of those, 56 per cent had stopped working within one year of diagnosis, and 80 per cent within six years of diagnosis.