Etanercept maintains the clinical benefit achieved by infliximab in patients with rheumatoid arthritis who discontinued infliximab due to side effects.

To evaluate efficacy of switching to etanercept therapy in patients with rheumatoid arthritis who already responded to infliximab, but presented side effects. Charts of 533 patients with RA were reviewed in order to select patients who responded to the therapy with infliximab and switched to etanercept because of occurrence of side effects. Thirty-seven were analyzed. No statistical difference between infliximab, before withdrawal, and etanercept after 24 weeks was detected in terms of DAS44, HAQ,. ESR and CRP. This study shows that etanercept mantains the clinical benefit achieved by infliximab and suggest that a second anti-TNf inhibitor can be the favorable therapy for RA when a first anti-TNF agent has been withdrawn because of adverse advent.