[Remarkable medical advances in rheumatology : may be…]

The development of new drugs is a significant activity in a university hospital that favors access to therapeutic novelties to patients. Rheumatology, whose drug armamentarium was poor in the 1980s, has benefited from the huge progresses of immunology in the 1980-1990s, allowing a therapeutic revolution in whom the academic hospital of Liège (CHU Liège) has been strongly implicated. First protocols with anti-TNF-? monoclonal antibodies have been applied in 1997. Sixty-one protocols have been initiated in rheumatoid arthritis, 12 in ankylosing spondylitis, 10 in psoriatic arthritis, 9 in systemic erythematosus lupus, 3 in giant cell arteritis, 1 in polymyalgia rheumatica, 5 in osteoarthritis and 4 in osteoporosis. Potential and pitfalls will be discussed disease by disease and also by drug categories. The balance remains globally positive, but remission is far from be reached.