Should I Be Concerned About Taking Methotrexate for RA?

Should I Be Concerned About Taking Methotrexate for RA? (1:15)

Methotrexate, a chemotherapy drug, is the most commonly prescribed disease modifying anti-rheumatic drug for patients with rheumatoid arthritis. In this video, W. Hayes Wilson, MD, chief of rheumatology at Piedmont Hospital, discusses methotrexate.

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Patients are really afraid to take any type of medicine , but when you tell them, I'm going to give you a chemotherapy they are particularly frightened, what we do is we try to reassure them with the information that we have available to us. Often times we get the information from the American College of Rheumatology or the Arthritis Foundation, which are very valuable resources for patients and for us to help our patients.

I think that once they understand how effective the medication is, and that the side effects though they are there, potential side effects are there, they are really rather small. Patients usually are willing to try the medicine rather than to have the destruction from the arthritis. So if you were being treated for cancer you might take 100 milligrams and if you are being treated for rheumatoid arthritis it's usually somewhere between 15 and 25 milligrams and we usually start on a low side and build our way up.