Potential of targeted drug delivery systems in treatment of rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a serious systemic autoimmune inflammatory disorder of joints leading to inflamed synovia, bone and cartilage destruction, thereby leading to functional limitation and reduced quality of life. Present pharmacotherapy offers an effective treatment but suffers various disadvantages such as ineffectiveness in delaying disease progression, lack safety, and patient incompliance. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop new drugs and drug delivery systems for safe and efficient clinical treatment. Building suitable technology platforms for development of dosage forms which can enhance effectiveness, patient acceptability while maintaining safety, efficacy and affordability is the need of the hour. Hence this review article describes potential of the various targeting strategies i.e., active and passive targeting strategies aimed specifically to deliver drugs to the inflamed joint. Special focus has been given to various nanotechnology based drug delivery systems that are being developed for treatment of RA. Also highlighted some of the therapeutic targets that can be exploited for designing therapies for RA. Further discussed applications of novel drug delivery systems in pharmacotherapy of anti-rheumatic drugs demonstrating the advantages and disadvantages. [Display omitted]