JAK Inhibitors for Rheumatoid Arthritis WHAT IS

JAK Inhibitors for Rheumatoid Arthritis

WHAT IS A JAK INHIBITOR?

If you have rheumatoid arthritis (RA), your doctor may suggest Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors to help ease your joint pain and swelling. These drugs tamp down your overactive immune system -- the body's defense against germs -- to help prevent damage to your joints.


JAK inhibitors belong to a family of medicine called DMARDs (disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs). Three JAK inhibitors, baricitinib (Olumiant),tofacitinib (Xeljanz), and upadacitinib (Rinvoq), are approved by the FDA to treat rheumatoid arthritis. More should appear in the next few years if they succeed in clinical trials.

How JAK Inhibitors Work
If you have RA, your body makes too many proteins called cytokines, which play a role in inflammation. Some cytokines attach to receptors on immune cells, like a key fitting into a lock. When that happens, messages are sent to the cell to make even more cytokines.

JAK inhibitors put a wrench in the process by blocking the messaging pathway. This calms down your immune system and helps ease your RA symptoms.

Who Benefits?
You may be among the many people with RA whose symptoms are well-controlled with an older drug, such as adalimumab (Humira) or methotrexate (Trexall). In that case, you may not need a JAK inhibitor.

But the older drugs don't always work for everyone. About 65% of people who take DMARDs, for example, get relief from symptoms. If you're not in this group, a JAK inhibitor might make a difference. In one study, about half of people with RA who didn't improve with biologic drugs had symptoms that were less severe after they took the JAK inhibitor tofacitinib for 3 months.


Another advantage of JAK inhibitors is that you can take them by mouth. You must inject biologics, such as adalimumab, into your skin, while doctors infuse others into the bloodstream. But you can take JAK inhibitors as a pill.