IL1A and rheumatoid arthritis: Targeting IL-1 for RA has been shown to reduce disease symptoms in some patients compared to placebo (Mertens and Singh, 2009b) and in combination with MTX compared to MTX alone (Cohen et al., 2002), however, the improvements were relatively modest in a large double-blind randomized control study, in contrast to the findings of TNF-a inhibitors (Bresnihan et al., 1998).