Rheumatology: Current Research
Open Access

Abstract

Effectiveness and Safety of Rituximab in Patients with Active Rheumatoid Arthritis

Maham Mehmood* and Mahnoor Arshad

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is associated with an increased risk of Serious Infection Events (SIE), lymphomas and with increased death rates due to cardiovascular disease. The main objective of this review analysis is to find the Effectiveness and safety of rituximab in patients with active rheumatoid arthritis. This study was conducted using a systematic search on Google scholar, PubMed and Web of science published until 20^th April 2021. The cited references of retrieved articles and previous reviews were also manually checked to identify any additional eligible studies. There were total 188 studies that identified initially from PubMed, Google scholar and Web of Science databases. After excluding duplicates and articles that did not meet the inclusion criteria, we obtained 90 articles with full-texts which were read for further evaluation, where another 75 were excluded as irrelevant. Overall, we included 15 articles that directly match on the inclusion criteria. It is concluded that rituximab is effective primarily in seropositive RA. Recent studies have further supported the efficacy of reduced dosage and different regimens, although more work is needed to establish the optimal strategy. Safety data from rheumatology as well as oncology literature highlight the need for hepatitis screening as well as checking pre-treatment immunoglobulin levels to identify patients possibly at greater risk of infection. Data thus far do not indicate the need for routine tuberculosis screening.

Published Date: 2021-05-18; Received Date: 2021-04-27