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COPENHAGEN — Rheumatoid arthritis and two other rheumatic diseases are as strong as diabetes as risk factors for cardiovascular disease, prompting a European League Against Rheumatism task force to issue the group's first consensus recommendations for managing cardiovascular risk in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, and psoriatic arthritis. “In our view, rheumatoid arthritis [RA], ankylosing spondylitis [AS], and psoriatic arthritis [PsA] should be seen as new, independent cardiovascular risk factors,” Dr. Michael T. Nurmohamed said at the annual European Congress of Rheumatology. “Very importantly, the risk is comparable to type 2 diabetes,” added Dr. Nurmohamed, a rheumatologist at the...

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that it was investigating whether four drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and other immune system diseases might increase the risk of cancer in children. The F.D.A. said that it had received reports of 30 cases of cancer over 10 years among children and young adults treated with those drugs, which are sold by Amgen, Abbott Laboratories and other companies. But the agency did not make clear how many children had taken the drugs or whether the cancer incidence among them was higher than would be expected. And it said that for now,...

Patients with common immune disorders such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis could one day be treated with bone marrow transplants, scientists claimed yesterday. Hopes for the new treatment follow the development of a more efficient transplant technique which avoids the need for radio- or chemotherapy, both of which have potentially dangerous side-effects. Traditional bone marrow transplants are used to treat only life-threatening conditions, such as leukaemia or lymphoma. The treatment infuses healthy adult stem cells into the patient, which then form fresh blood and immune cells. But before the transplant can be done, patients must receive a course of...

U-M scientists find new genes linked to rheumatoid arthritis that are expressed differently in genetically identical twins Ann Arbor, Mich. -- They sleep together, eat together, and most people find it impossible to tell them apart. Identical twins who grow up together share just about everything, including their genes. But sometimes only one twin will have health problems when genetics predicts both of them should. Scientists at the University of Michigan Medical School are just beginning to understand how two people who are so similar biologically can be so different when it comes to the development of diseases like rheumatoid...

AP MEDICAL WRITER CHICAGO -- Rheumatoid arthritis patients taking Humira or Remicade face triple the risk of developing several kinds of cancer and double the risk of getting serious infections, a study led by the Mayo Clinic found. The analysis builds on previous reports about the risks associated with Abbott Laboratories' Humira and Centocor's Remicade. But the earlier research focused mostly on one kind of cancer - lymphoma - and infections such as tuberculosis and pneumonia. The new study found an apparent link to other cancers, too, including skin, gastrointestinal, breast and lung tumors. It also quantifies the risks and...

The drug trial victim whose head ballooned in size so much that his sobbing girlfriend said he resembled the Elephant Man said he couldn't resist the £2,000 fee for the tests. Mohammed Abdalla, 28, had planned to use his £2,000 fee for being a guinea pig to make his family in Egypt financially secure. He wanted to set up his brother Mahmood in business and look after his father, an imam, and desperately ill mother. Yesterday, as the London bar manager's dreams were disclosed, it emerged that scientists had warned about the damage the drug could do to human tissue...

ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON -- Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. said the FDA has approved a new drug to treat moderate to severe cases of rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic disease that afflicts more than 2 million Americans. The drug, abatacept, is to be marketed as Orencia and is designed to be given intravenously. The company, based in New York, intends to start selling it by the end of February. The drug acts by suppressing part of the immune system to treat rheumatoid arthritis, which is marked by swelling, stiffness and pain in the linings of the joints. The linings become inflamed after the...

VITAL SIGNS Women who breast-feed have a lower risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis, even decades later, researchers have found. And the longer they nurse their babies, the smaller the risk becomes. The findings grow out of the long-term Nurses' Health Study, which has followed the health of more than 120,000 women since 1976. The study, led by Dr. Elizabeth W. Karlson of Brigham and Women's Hospital, a Harvard affiliate, appears in the current issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism. Rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that can destroy the joints, affects women much more often than it does men. Some scientists have...

A marijuana-based medication for people suffering from multiple sclerosis and severe pain is expected to be approved for sale in Britain early this year, British officials say. The drug, Sativex, developed by GW Pharmaceuticals, a British company, is a liquid extract from marijuana grown by the company under license from the government. Developed to be sprayed under the tongue, it would be the first drug in recent decades to include all the components of the cannabis plant, advocates of medical marijuana say. The British agency that regulates pharmaceuticals does not like to discuss potential drugs before they are approved. The...