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| Another allopathic approach to rheumatoid arthritis is the use of immune-suppressing drugs. Rheumatoid arthritis is an immune system disorder, and by slowing cell division and slowing the entire immune system, doctors try to slow the disease. Azathioprine, chlorambucil, cyclophosphamide and methotrexate are immunosuppressant drugs used in this manner. Patients must be supervised closely because of their increased vulnerability to common infections. |
| Antibiotics, not usually associated with arthritis, are actually important in the treatment of at least two inflammatory illnesses. The bacteria responsible for chlamydia nonspecific urethritis were shown to cause a form of unexplained arthritis in young women when nearly half of the tested patients had chlamydia bacteria in their joints. Bacteria transmitted by infected ticks cause Lyme disease, which produces arthritis symptoms in its victims. Antibiotics remain the preferred treatment for bacterial infections, especially if they are diagnosed early. |
| Once Lyme arthritis develops, usually accompanied by nerve problems, the illness no longer responds to oral antibiotics. Intravenous antibiotic therapy is of questionable value in advanced Lyme disease, for while physicians often claim the illness has been cured after weeks of this expensive, painful, time-consuming therapy, their patients display many of the symptoms they exhibited before treatment and are further debilitated by the antibiotics' side effects. |
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