Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic disease characterized by inflammatory synovitis. It can lead to symmetry and invasive inflammation of joints, and eventually lead to joint deformity and loss of function. Medical treatment is a common and effective method of treating rheumatoid arthritis in clinics. Naturally derived compounds can be one of the options in medical therapy. Many anti-rheumatoid arthritis compounds have been found from natural medicines, especially Chinese herbs. In order to understand the progresses in these compounds, we collected nearly 10-year reports on anti-rheumatoid arthritis compounds in PubMed database and summarized the pharmacological properties of the compounds. In this study, we collected 18 natural compounds with potential anti-rheumatoid arthritis effects while these compounds are still far from clinical applications. Herein, we compared the pharmacological characteristics of these compounds in order to search for novel candidate compounds with high clinical potential for anti-rheumatoid arthritis.

类风湿关节炎（RA）是一种以炎症性滑膜炎为特征的慢性疾病。它可能导致关节的对称性和浸润性炎症，并最终导致关节畸形和功能丧失。在临床上，药物治疗是治疗类风湿关节炎的常见且有效的方法。天然来源的化合物可能是医学治疗中的一种选择。从天然药物，尤其是中草药中发现了许多抗类风湿关节炎化合物。为了了解这些化合物的进展，我们在PubMed数据库中收集了近10年的抗类风湿关节炎化合物的报告，并总结了这些化合物的药理特性。在这项研究中，我们收集了18种具有潜在抗类风湿关节炎作用的天然化合物，但这些化合物仍远未达到临床应用。在这里，我们比较了这些化合物的药理特性，以寻找对类风湿关节炎具有高临床潜力的新型候选化合物。