Infliximab treatment increases left ventricular ejection fraction in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: assessment of heart function by echocardiography, endothelin 1, interleukin 6, and NT-pro brain natriuretic peptide

What Was Tested

Researchers studied BNP (Nesiritide) and Endothelin-1 in the context of rheumatoid arthritis in this clinical trial publication.

To study the influence of anti-tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) treatment on echocardiographic measures and concentrations of endothelin 1 (ET-1), interleukin 6 (IL-6), and amino-terminal fragment of pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) in a cohort of 23 female patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 23 patients taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as middle-aged adults, women only.

The researchers recruited 23 patients (mean age 51.3 ± 1.55 yrs) with RA resistant to treatment with disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs and average disease duration of 7.1 ± 1.0 years who had been selected to start treatment with the anti-TNF-α antagonist infliximab.

Transthoracic echocardiographic examinations were performed before the first infusion and repeated after 1 year of treatment.

How the Study Was Run

The timeline in the abstract includes 1 year.

Data for age, sex, RA disease activity by Disease Activity Score (DAS28) and echocardiographic data, NT-proBNP, IL-6, ET-1, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP), and other routine laboratory data were collected before treatment and after 1 year.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Antibodies, Monoclonal, Antirheumatic Agents, Arthritis, Rheumatoid, Cohort Studies, Heart Failure, Infliximab and Natriuretic Peptide, Brain.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a clinical trial of BNP (Nesiritide) and Endothelin-1 in 23 patients in people with rheumatoid arthritis over 1 year.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2012 (The Journal of rheumatology), a journal based in Canada.

More context: the BNP (Nesiritide) compound page and the Endothelin-1 compound page, Rheumatoid arthritis research.