In recent years tremendous progress has been made in the therapeutic management 
of rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatologists now have a large armamentarium of 
highly efficient drugs with different mechanisms of action at their disposal. 
These new drugs consist of biologicals (biological disease-modifying 
antirheumatic drugs, bDMARDs) as well as targeted synthetic DMARDs (tsDMARD). A 
common feature of these new drugs for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis is that 
the molecular target of the drug is known, which is not the case for 
conventional DMARDs. With the help of the new drugs, the therapeutic goal of 
inducing remission in patients with rheumatoid arthritis has become reality for 
many patients. Nevertheless, there is still a significant proportion of patients 
who do not adequately respond to all available drugs, leaving room for still 
further improvement. This review gives a short overview on the currently 
available and effective substances for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.