Gender Disparity in RA Treatment
Posted on: Wednesday, 20 June 2007, 09:01 CDT
Women, who report more pain than men, get an effective but expensive drug against rheumatoid arthritis, found a Swedish study.
Women are known to have consistently worse long-term outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis than men -- to date, it has been unclear if this is due to factors intrinsic to the disease or because of gender-related prescribing, lead researcher Dr. Ronald van Vollenhoven, of the Karolinska Institute, in Sweden, said in a statement.
Our study does not show a gender-bias as such, but does indicate that physicians to some extent 'discount' the subjective measures of disease activity, which we found to be higher in women, and let their decisions be driven almost solely by objective markers of the disease.
Women are receiving anti-TNFs -- a medication that works by blocking the action of the chemical tumor necrosis factorat -- at a higher level of disease symptoms than men, according to the findings presented at the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology in Barcelona, Spain.
Source: United Press International
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