Researchers Identified New Target for Rheumatoid Arthritis Drugs last January not July 1st in the Dailty Express

Researchers Identified Potential New Target for Rheumatoid Arthritis Drugs, maybe...

 

            Readers of the Daily Express on July 1st 2013 may be forgiven for thinking they may have heard about the "Arthritis Care breakthrough" a few months ago. They have. The front page of the London Daily Express, under the byline of Jo Wiley Health Editor IS REHASHING OLD STORIES FROM THE INTERNET, this one dated January 25th 2013. The front page misleadingly screams:   

But the striking front page is misleading and cruel says Julian Bray Broadcaster & Journalist he said "The study announced by Researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery simply identified a potential new target for drugs to treat patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a protein known as IRHOM2."

The finding could at some time in the future provide an effective and potentially less toxic alternative therapy to tumor necrosis factor-alpha blockers (TNF-blockers), one of the treatments for rheumatoid arthritis, and could help patients who do not respond to this treatment. Dr Jane Salmon quoted in the Daily Express gave no guarantees and rather than being "a breakthough" it is yet another avenue being explored which could possibly be turned into a a fully tested drug therapy possibly many years in the future.

The researchers only claimed that efforts to develop drugs that work on this new target are underway. Simply there is a long way to go, and no guaranteed chance at the end of it that it will work, that it will work.
Jane Salmon, M.D., (Pictured) of the Mary Kirkland Center for Lupus Research at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York City, is an author of the study. “We have identified a clinically relevant target that can be applied to patients in the near term.”

The study has already appeared online, on January 25th, then in print in the the Journal of Clinical Investigation, February 2013 print issue.

Julian Bray added: "Rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease, is triggered, in large part, by TNF-alpha, a small signaling protein usually involved in launching protective systemic inflammatory responses.  With excessive TNF production, immune cells can become activated  and cause tissue inflammation. This produces a number of diseases, including . rheumatoid arthritis"

"While TNF-blockers help many rheumatoid arthritis patients, these treatments are very expensive, and some patients do not respond. For this reason, researchers have been searching for alternative targets in patients with inflammatory diseases against which drugs can be directed. It is hoped the Daily Express will quickly make the position clear so that the millions who suffer in the UK are not given premature false hope at this early stage, and that Jo Wiley will recognise this is not front page news but nearly six months old and ......" 

JULIAN BRAY, Media, Aviation, & Travel Expert. Broadcaster & Journalist NUJ EQUITY UK Tel: 01733 345581 (isdn link 01733 555319)