Rheumatic disease includes more than 200 musculoskeletal and autoimmune conditions. Though each rheumatic disease has its own defining characteristics, they all share three hallmark symptoms: pain, inflammation, and stiffness. Rheumatic conditions are also progressive with symptoms that continue to worsen if you don’t get the best treatment.
One of today’s most innovative medications, called biologics, offers hope for improving your quality of life. When you receive a biologic through intravenous (IV) infusion therapy, the treatment significantly relieves your pain, improves function, and may inhibit disease progression, depending on which biologic you receive.
We talk with our patients at Rheumatology Solutions in Northeast San Antonio, Texas, about their biologic options and recommend the one that’s best for their underlying condition. Then we administer IV infusion therapy in the office. Patients relax in comfortable reclining chairs, while registered nurses with extensive infusion experience closely supervise their treatment.
When your pain and inflammation fail to improve with conventional medications and physical therapy, the next step for many patients is an IV infusion containing one of the biologic medications.
We frequently use IV infusion therapy to relieve the pain of conditions such as:
We also infuse biologics that reduce the pain of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis and may help put them into remission.
Biologics are unlike other drugs. Where standard drugs are produced with chemicals, biologics are proteins created from living cells, such as plants, microorganisms, or animal cells.
When you have a rheumatic disease, numerous activities occur in your immune system that promote inflammation, pain, and ongoing joint damage.
Biologics are precisely engineered to target specific inflammatory cells, cellular interactions, and other activities in your immune system. The proteins that make up biologics act like your body’s own proteins, so they can alter the abnormal immune processes that occur in rheumatic diseases, change the results, and improve your symptoms.
These are a few ways that an IV infusion with biologics can alleviate your pain:
We offer IV infusion therapy that rebuild bone density in patients with osteoporosis.
Many biologics for rheumatic diseases must be given by IV infusion. The proteins would be destroyed if they went through your digestive tract. But this method also offers a great benefit because the biologic goes directly into your bloodstream, where it’s quickly dispersed and goes to work in your body.
If you suffer from ongoing pain because of a rheumatologic condition, we can help you find treatment that relieves the pain and slow down disease progression. Call Rheumatology Solutions at 210-590-9596 or book an appointment online today.
