Filling Bone Erosions: a Longitudinal Multicentric HR-pQCT Study of Subcutaneous Tocilizumab in Rheumatoid Arthritis
Status:
Recruiting
Trial end date:
2023-06-30
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease mediated by the production of
several cytokines, which leads to the destruction of bone and cartilage tissue in multiple
joints and to bone loss. Conventional radiographs (CR) are considered as the gold standard
for diagnosis and follow up of joint changes in RA. But this method has low sensitivity to
detect early erosive changes and is unable to evaluate periarticular bone loss.
High Resolution peripheral QCT (HRpQCT) enables the detection of erosions less than 0.5 mm in
width or depth at metacarpo-phalangeal (MCP) joints. Using 3-D high resolution analysis of
cortical bone erosions, this one is also able to evaluate the volumes of erosion and the
evolution under treatments IL6 (6- interleukin) plays a major role in inflammatory process
and bone damages related to RA. Tocilizumab (TCZ) is a humanized anti-IL-6R monoclonal
antibody, developed and investigated in several clinical trials in RA. This biotherapy, in
association with methotrexate (MTX) or given in monotherapy, is efficient in RA with
inadequate response to MTX or anti-TNF b (tumor necrosis factor). TCZ reduces dramatically
systemic inflammation, structural progression and improves clinical symptoms and quality of
life.
Tocilizumab may help reducing bone erosions, periarticular osteopenia and systemic bone loss.