TNFα Inhibitors May Improve Asthma Symptoms: A Case Series of 12 Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis and Asthma

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease that constitutes one of the leading causes of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease(1). Most patients with moderate or severe disease are treated with inhaled corticosteroids, but many patients have refractory disease(2). Treatment options for these refractory patients are limited; there are emerging data on the effectiveness of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF)α inhibitors(3–5), but there are no long-term studies. In this report, we studied a large prospective RA cohort, the Brigham Rheumatoid Arthritis Sequential Study (BRASS), to identify a case series of patients with both RA and asthma, who were treated with TNFα inhibitors. We aimed to determine whether asthma symptoms correlated with TNFα inhibitor therapy.