Abstract
Objective: To evaluate the impact of etanercept therapy on the employment status of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Methods: There were totally 79 RA patients treated with etanercept in Tokyo Hakujuji Hospital and Yoshino memorial clinic.
We focused on 20 patients, who had job with difficulty or got laid off at the time when the treatment was started. These patients background were as follows: male were 11, female were 9.
Average age in this treatment was 52.1 years old (from 24 to 73). Average suffering period Was 75.1 months (from 12 to 240). Average follow up period was 19.1 (from 13 to 38 months). Their occupation ranged from self-employed 6, office worker 4, civil servant 3, taxi driver 1, shop assistant1, to welfare worker 2.
Results: almost all patients’ job performance improved, especially 9 patients normalized after treatment. However, 3 patients were difficult to continue working. The reason was that1male had bad complications and the 2 other female could not work due to labor regulations. The average DAS28-ESR was 3.70 (from 3.25 to 4.86) before treatment and 2.41 (from 1.5 to 2.76) after treatment in the patients.
This showed a very significant improvement(P＜0.01).
In conclusion, etanercept is very effective for RA and makes it possible for patients to continue working. In addition, it is generally believed that both the indication and the decision to start the use of biological agents have a great impact on the employment status.
