RE Potential groundbreaking new Treatment for RA sufferers

Yes I too read with scepticism but I think it's the fact that they are researching and trialing new drugs and possible cures specifically for RA that heartens me. People are so ignorant and just assume all arthritis is wear and tear/ ageing and dismiss or say "oh I know my auntie had that in her thumbs" but they don't realise that RA and other autoimmune/ inflam arthers are systemic and affect people of all ages - make you feel rubbish as well as stiff and pained etc - and the drugs also make you feel pretty horrible and have a huge impact on your lifestyle.

If anyone else wants to reply to the retired nurse who says it's all down to blood tests rather than x-rays I'd be delighted too. She says RA often goes into remission with drugs but it doesn't - it rarely goes into remission from everything I've read! And she obviously doesn't know that blood often doesn't tell the whole story either (has maybe never heard of sero-negative RA - grrrrr I fumed after reading that comment!)

I was stalling yesterday on whacking up my dose of Methotrexate but then hands, wrists and elbows are so awful just now and I read that article and thought "what the hell?!" and went for the doubled dose! Saw my GP this morning for blood test and he professed amazement that I had consumed this doubled dose so willingly (i.e without the usual prevarication)so I told him "it was the article in the Mail wot dunnit!" Happy New Year to all. Matx

I feel almost bad for putting the link up now because it's so sad to think of people's hopes getting raised and then nothing coming of it. I find it good to see some the symptoms of RA pubicised because one of the things I find hardest is that people think of arthritis as one disease - not as lots of very different ones which require different medication and approaches to exercise etc.

All forms of arthritis are awful I'm aware but the inflammatory ones are much less of a known quantity and so a lot of the general public tend to thing of Osteoarthritis as arthritis and not realise that RA is an autoimmune disease also a systemic one - as all the inflammatory arthritis's are - and they often make people feel flu-like and exhausted as well as causing pain and stiffness.

The article doesn't reflect this aspect but it's the one I feel should be highlighted most because lots of people with inflammatory arthritis have M.E like symptoms long before they get joint pain so it would have been extra good if they had focused on that side of the disease - as well as the fact that many young people suffer terribly from arthritis but get very little sympathy from the older generations or their peer group. For instance I've read of people saying that they get shouted at by older people or the able bodied or people with buggies and visible disabilites if they have a blue disabled badge or are on public transport with crutches or a stick. That's what I find really depressing.

I'm extremely fortunate because I only have a non-aggressive form of RA so far and the Methotrexate and physio seems to be working quite well to date (famous last words - I so hope not?!) but I know now that young people can get this disease very aggressively and find it so sad that it receives none of the attention or sympathy that other diseases such as cancer or MS seem to get, despite it being equally devastating for those who have it. And the same of course goes for Lupus, PA and AS and those much younger than me who get OA too - ignorance makes these diseases much harder to bear I feel and I've been lucky to not have this to cope with until I was 48 (now almost 49!).

I really hope that this vaccine is made usable for sufferers soon and that the required funding for trials etc is forthcoming, because at the end of the day the economics of it are that patients who are diagnosed and treated asap and put on anti-tnfs (very expensive) are also often the ones who go into drug-induced remission, which then in turn saves tax payers the drain of disability benefit payments and additional healthcare and unemployment etc that are otherwise the inevitable outcome of not treating soon enough or properly in the first instance? Sorry to rant on but I feel so strongly about this now - having had a taste of being left in limbo-land and finding myself at the mercy of a very beleagured NHS.