[Optimizing rheumatoid arthritis treatment with rituximab--individualized patient approach]

Disease activity assessment is a cornerstone of monitoring rheumatoid arthritis (RA) development and guidance for rituximab treatment. Beside clinical signs and symptoms biomarkers (RF and anti-CCP) are important early predictors of response to therapy and they can predict disease development. Autoantibody (RF and anti-CCP) seropositivity has been associated with positive response to rituximab (RTX) in antiTNF-IR patients, DMARD-IR patients and MTX-naive patients. Selecting therapy for TNF-IR patients providing most likely response it should be taken in consideration results form recently published assessments demonstrating for RTX treated patients significant improvement in DAS28 from baseline versus alternative TNF inhibitor treatment. Recently published NICE treatment guideline is recommending upon antiTNF failure RTX treatment (in combination with MTX) instead antiTNF cycling.