Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) affects about 60,000 people in Britain, and is most common among men in their late teens and early twenties. It impairs mobility and causes fatigue.

The Arthritis Research Campaign (ARC) said that many patients were denied anti-TNF therapy, a new class of drugs that combat the inflammatory tumour necrosis factor, because of its high cost. Although it has been licensed for AS since 2003, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is not expected to review its use in AS patients until February 2007.

The ARC said that funding was patchy throughout the country and NHS trusts in England and Wales were not making the drugs available. It said that making the drugs more widely available would enable more patients to return to work. Professor Paul Wordsworth, of the ARC, said: “We urge NICE to speed up its approval process so that other people can benefit from the extraordinary transformation that these drugs can bring.”

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