All News
ACR 2017 Playbook
The annual ACR/ARHP meeting, which begins today, Sunday November 5th, is for many the premier meeting in rheumatology. The good news is that RheumNow and its expanded faculty will cover the meeting today and each day until Thursday. I haven’t missed an ACR meeting since 1984. In this span of 30 years I have acquired insights on how to navigate such a big meeting. When I say big, I mean over 15,000 attendees from over 100 countries swarming throughout a convention center that has the elements of the Texas state fair, Costco gone wild and a sold-out Margaritaville concert. Here's my ACR Playbook.
Read Article
Ironwood Featured Presentations
Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (IRWD) today announced one oral and twelve poster presentations to be presented at the upcoming ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in San Diego, California from November 3-8, 2017.
Read Article
The RheumNow Week in Review - 3 November 2017
Dr. Jack Cush reviews the news and highlights from the past week on RheumNow.com. Hear about death and risk of lupus, tight control in Crohn's, risk of knee OA, new diagnostic tool for PMR, keeping infections low with biologics and new shingles vaccine, and infection concerns for San Diego.
Read Article
CALM Study: Tight Control with Anti-TNF Wins in Crohn's Disease
Not unlike rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory disorders, therapeutic efficacy in Crohn's disease (CD) is often assessed clinically. There is growing use and interest in biomarkers of intestinal inflammation, such as faecal calprotectin and C-reactive protein.
Read Article
NSAID and Opioid Adverse Event Reports from MedWatch
One-third of adults in the USA experience chronic pain and take prescription nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), acetaminophen, or opioids.
Read Article
Tocilizumab Benefits Persist in SSc
Clinically meaningful improvements in systemic sclerosis among patients treated with subcutaneous tocilizumab (Actemra) persisted during the open-label phase of a multinational randomized phase II trial, researchers reported.
Read Article
High Volume Lyme Disease Reporting in Low Incidence Arkansas
Even though Arkansas lies on the edge of the geographic range of the principal Lyme disease tick vector, Ixodes scapularis, the risk for Lyme infection is low, and no confirmed Lyme disease cases were reported in Arkansas during 2008–2014 (1)
Read Article
New EULAR/ACR Classification Criteria for Adult and Juvenile Myositis
The European League Against Rheumatism and the American College of Rheumatology (EULAR/ACR) have developed classification criteria for idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) based on data from 976 IIM patients (74% adults; 26% children) and 624 non-IIM patients with mimicking conditions (82% ad
Read Article
Death Rates from Lupus Remain Disproportionately High
The Annals of Internal Medicine reports that despite improving trends in mortality, death rates from systematic lupus erythematosus (lupus) remain high compared to those in the general population, and disparities persist between subpopulations and geographic regions. Underreporting of lupus on death certificates may have resulted in underestimates of mortality rates.
Read Article
Necroptosis Drives Netosis and ANCA-Associated Vasculitis
PNAS reports that ANCA induced neutrophil activation, generation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETS), and vasculitis are regulated by necroptosis. Using inhibitors of necroptosis-inducing kinases they were able to prevent ANCA associated vasculitis (AAV) in animal models.
Read Article
CRIB Study Shows No Transplacental Transfer of Certolizumab
Mariette and colleagues have reported on the prospective pharmacokinetic study of placental transfer of certolizumab pegol (CZP) from pregnant women to their infants at the time of birith.
Read Article
CDC Endorses New Shingles Vaccine Over Zostavax
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced on 25 October they endorsed the use of the new GSK shingles vaccine (Shingrix) over the currently available live-virus vaccine (Zostavax) from Merck.
Read Article
The RheumNow Week in Review - 27 October 2017
The RheumNow Week in Review discusses the past week's news, journal articles and highlights from RheumNow.com. In this week's report, Dr.
Read Article
The Greatest Rheumatologist - Part II
Wow! I hope you read part I of yesterday's “Greatest Rheumatologist” article. So many big names and yet, other names and stories that were equally inspirational.
If you read the comments of the part I article you can clearly see several themes emerge.
Read Article
RABBIT Risk Scores are Higher in ICU-Admitted RA Patients
The German Rheumatoid Arthritis Biologics Registry (RABBIT) has developed an infectious risk calculator that can project a patient's risk of serious infection in the next 6 months based on several key factors - age, Prior DMARDs, prednisone dose, comorbidities and the biologic intended for use.&n
Read Article
Does Birth Control or Breastfeeding Reduce RA Risk?
Researchers have reported their case-control study using the Swedish Epidemiological Investigation of RA study (2641 cases/4251 controls) to examine the influence of oral contraceptive (OC) use or breastfeeding on the risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Read Article
The Greatest Rheumatologist - Part I
Who is the greatest rheumatologist? What makes for a great rheum? Is it clinical acumen, scientific achievement, educational prowess or years of unrivaled service or mentoring? Rheumatologists are quite opinionated on this subject and very nostalgic about their mentors and leaders. When I’ve posed this question in small groups, it’s plain to see how moved they become when discussing mentors or peers who influenced them. Thus, I posed this question to many of our leaders and mentors: who do you think of as the greatest rheumatologist?
Read Article
ICYMI: The Greatest Rheumatologist - Part I
Who is the greatest rheumatologist? What makes for a great rheum? Is it clinical acumen, scientific achievement, educational prowess or years of unrivaled service or mentoring? Rheumatologists are quite opinionated on this subject and very nostalgic about their mentors and leaders. When I’ve posed this question in small groups, it’s plain to see how moved they become when discussing mentors or peers who influenced them. Thus, I posed this question to many of our leaders and mentors: who do you think of as the greatest rheumatologist?
Read Article
Top 16 Drugs in Rheumatology 2016
Using data compiled from annual reports, SEC filings, press releases, company websites, recently released sales figures show that in 2016, 11 of the top 16 rheumatology drugs demonstrated blockbuster sales (>$1 billion per annum). Highlights from this report include:
Read Article
Biosimilars Projected to Yield $54 Billion in Savings
A primary projected advantage to biosimilar drugs development has been cost savings. A new study from the RAND Corporation suggests biosimilars could cut health care spending in the United States by $54 billion over the next decade. This number is nearly 20 percent greater than a similar study conducted three years ago by the same researchers.
Read Article