PREDICTION OF CLINICAL EFFICIENCY OF SIMVASTATIN TREATMENT IN PATIENTS WITH RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS

Abstract

Abstract. Treatment with statins results in reduction of disease activity in one-third of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The aim of this study was to assess some factors that may predict clinical response to simvastatin therapy before starting the treatment. We evaluated an association of treatment efficacy with baseline clinical and laboratory parameters including disease activity measures, cytokine profiles in sera and culture supernatants of peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Thirty-three patients with active RA were enrolled in the study. The patients were treated with simvastatin at 40 mg/day for three months. Eleven patients (33%) developed a moderate response according to EULAR criteria. It was shown that serum IL-10 concentrations was higher in responders, and positively correlated with clinical response to simvastatin. We carried out a receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis in order to assess the accuracy of serum IL-10 for the predicting of EULAR response development. The cut-off threshold corresponding to the highest sensitivity (89%) and specificity (62%) was a value of 6.5 pg/ml. In conclusion, the performance characteristics of serum IL-10 measurement proved to be good enough to predict EULAR response to simvastatin therapy in RA patients.

Keywords

• rheumatoid arthritis
• prediction of clinical efficiency
• treatment
• statins