Can rheumatoid arthritis responsiveness to methotrexate and biologics be predicted?

Abstract

This review briefly recapitulates the existing markers predictive of RA responsiveness to treatment, focusing on MTX alone or combined with a biologic. In addition to the demographic and clinical factors, an update is provided of the predictive biomarkers identified by large-scale gene and protein analyses that generated new insights into the ability of high-throughput analysis of biological systems to select new potential indicators. Among the large-scale analysis tools now available, pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics (including transcriptomic and proteomic approaches) have been shown to provide such new putative biomarkers of therapeutic responses.