Originally published June 23 2005
Arthritis sufferers find hope for cure in new gene therapy
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A recent Forbes.com article says people with rheumatoid arthritis may finally find a cure, thanks to a new gene therapy in which a gene is inserted into a diseased joint and then blocks the protein that causes the pain and inflammation of arthritis.
For the approximately 2.1 million Americans who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, treatment has consisted of painkillers and exercise but no cures for this degenerative joint disease.
Now the results of a phase I trial suggest that gene therapy against this common condition may be safe and feasible in humans.
"The overall direction this is moving is to develop a gene therapy for arthritis in which therapeutic genes are put into people's joints to treat the disease," said study author Christopher Evans, the Robert W. Lovett professor of orthopedic surgery at the Center for Molecular Orthopaedics at Harvard Medical School.
The theory behind this treatment is that when a gene is inserted into the diseased joint, it remains there, producing a protein called human interleukin-1 receptor antagonist.
This protein in turn blocks interleukin-1, which is important in the arthritis process because it inflames and destroys tissue and bone, Evans said.
The findings appear in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the trial, which was designed to determine only if gene therapy is safe, the researchers took tissue from the joints of nine women with advanced rheumatoid arthritis.
They injected a harmless retrovirus in the tissues, and this virus served as a vehicle to carry human interleukin-1 receptor antagonist genes into the cells.
"This study is very important, as it shows for the first time that a gene therapy approach for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis can be conducted safely and efficiently," said Elvire Gouze, an assistant research professor in the Gene Therapy Laboratory at the Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation at the University of Florida.
While it's too early to tell if this approach will be ultimately successful, Wilson believes the research is an important first step to achieving a novel treatment.
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