Other treatment options biologics

Other Treatment Options Biologics

Dr. Mona Marabani
Rheumatologist
President, Australian Rheumatology Association

So this is often a thing that’s also a bit shocking for people, that they start out on nothing and then they say, “What you want me to take another drug as well?” So they’ll be on three or four different medications and if that is not successful then we will escalate until we reach the biologic therapies which we know are extremely effective but come with very detailed specifications as to what you have to have done beforehand and what the level of disease is for you to qualify to get these sorts of very expensive therapies through Medicare.

Assoc. Professor Peter Youssef
Rheumatologist, Royal Prince Alfred Institute of Rheumatology and Orthopaedics, Sydney
Chair – Arthritis Australia Scientific Advisory Committee

The introduction of biological agents has revolutionised the management of rheumatoid arthritis. These drugs have been around for 15 years and I can remember the first patient that I put on these drugs. That patient had failed the oral conventional drugs and responded beautifully to the biological agent.

Dr. Samuel Whittle
Rheumatologist, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide

Biological DMARDs or the so-called biologics have been available in Australia for almost 15 years now. They’ve been really a great advance in the management of a number of the diseases that we treat. They are mediations that are made very specifically to treat a particular molecule that is specifically involved in the inflammation in the joints or the spine, which means they’re very, very targeted treatments and they’re quite powerful in that way but they often have relatively few side effects because they’re so specifically targeted.

Dr. Mona Marabani
Rheumatologist
President, Australian Rheumatology Association

We are very lucky now that we have a selection of different drugs to use. Some of the drugs are relevant across all of the diseases and some of them are more particular to rheumatoid arthritis or ankylosing spondylitis and so on. They have different ways of being given; so some are given weekly or monthly or fortnightly just under the skin subcutaneously, and others you have to go to an infusion centre and have a drip in your arm for an hour or two.

Dr. Irwin Lim
Rheumatologist

Depending on your specific circumstance and the other medical conditions you may have and the actual manifestations of your disease, your rheumatologist will discuss the most appropriate biologic disease-modifying agent to use with you.