[Remarkable medical advances in rheumatology : may be…].

The development of new drugs is a significant activity in a university hospital that favors access to therapeutic novelties to patients. Rheumatology, whose drug armamentarium was poor in the 1980s, has benefited from the huge progresses of immunology in the 1980-1990s, allowing a therapeutic revolution in whom the academic hospital of Liège (CHU Liège) has been strongly implicated. First protocols with anti-TNF-? monoclonal antibodies have been applied in 1997.

Intermittent treatment of knee osteoarthritis with oral chondroitin sulfate: a one-year, randomized, double-blind, multicenter study versus placebo.

Objective: To investigate the efficacy and tolerability of a 3-month duration, twice a-year, intermittent treatment with oral chondroitin sulfate (CS) in knee osteoarthritis (OA) patients.

Design: A total of 120 patients with symptomatic knee OA were randomized into two groups receiving either 800mg CS or placebo (PBO) per day for two periods of 3 months during 1 year. Primary efficacy outcome was Lequesne's algo-functional index (AFI); secondary outcome parameters included VAS, walking time, global judgment, and paracetamol consumption.

A double-blind crossover study of benoxaprofen and indomethacin in outpatients suffering from osteoarthrosis of knees.

Benoxaprofen (600 mg once a day) and indomethacin (25 mg t.i.d.