Gold Standard

Decision Resources, Inc., one of the world's leading research and advisory firms focusing on pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that Abbott Laboratories' Humira will replace Centocor's Remicade as the clinical gold standard for the treatment of Crohn's disease by 2010. According to the new report entitled Humira Emerges as the Leading Therapy: A Crohn's Disease Study, Humira outperforms Remicade in efficacy, safety, and convenience.

"Data from Phase III clinical trails suggest that Humira more effectively maintains remission and clinical response than Remicade," said Cynthia Mundy, Ph.D., therapeutic area director at Decision Resources. "Humira's less frequent and less severe hypersensitivity reactions, lower rate of minor side effects, and subcutaneous administration also are improvements over Remicade."

Are you buying it? Convenience maybe, but the rest? I am not so sure. But, then again, I am not so sure about the Remicade either. Maybe I am just naturally suspicious when the words Gold Standard are used with this cruddy disease.