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UK Audit Shows Early RA Referrals Still Too Slow
A national audit of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and early inflammatory arthritis patients included 6,354 patients drawn from 143 trusts and health boards in England and Wales. Early arthritis clinics exist in 57% of trusts.
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10 Ways Rheumatoid Arthritis Could’ve Killed Glenn Frey
I was truly stunned Monday when it was announced that Glenn Frey, from the Eagles, had died as a result of complications from his rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis and pneumonia.
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MRI Bone Marrow Lesions Predict Worse Outcomes in Osteoarthritis
Medical Research Council study shows MRI lesions may predict which patients will have more rapidly progressing osteoarthritis.
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FDA Approves Cosentyx for Ankylosing Spondylitis and Psoriatic Arthritis
Cosentyx (secukinumab) was approved by the FDA on 15 January, 2016 for patients with active ankyosing spondylitis (AS) and psoriatic arthritis (PsA).
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Lesinurad augments uric acid lowering effect in allopurinol non-responders
As the never-ending battle with refractory gout continues, the need for more safe and effective treatments remains. Often, steady remission and target urate levels are not achieved with allopurinol alone.
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Seropositivity Increases Risk of Rheumatoid Mortality
Three European registries analyzed their cohorts for outcomes that may be related to seropositivity for anticitrullinated protein antibodies (ACPA), rheumatoid factor (RF) and anticarbamylated protein (anti-CarP) antibodies.
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The Global Prevalence of Spondyloarthritis
SpA is a common disease, but with large variation in reported prevalence estimates, partly explained by differences in demographical and methodological characteristics.
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Increasing Hospitalization Rates for Shingles in Lupus
An administrative claims study of lupus patients drawn from the United States National Inpatient Sample between 2000 to 2011, studied hospitalization rates related to bacteremia, pneumonia, opportunistic fungal infection, herpes zoster, cytomegalovirus, or pneumocystis pneumonia (P
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New Scoring System Predicts 1 year survival in Hip Fracture Patients
A prospective study was conducted in Germany to establish predictors of 1 year survival after a hip fracture in elderly people.
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Secukinumab Shows Efficacy in Two Ankylosing Spondylitis Trials
NEJM has published the results of two studies wherein IL-17 inhibition with secukinumab (SEC) was shown to be effective in patients with anklylosing spondylitis.
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Increased Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes in Ankylosing Spondylitis
Although ankylosing spondylitis affects a predominantly male population, the ratio of men to women has declined from 9-10:1 in earlier studies to more recent estimates of 2-3:1 (F:M).
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Physicians Bash Meaningful Use at Open Forum
Members of two professional medical societies griped about what they view as the Obama administration's inept attempts to regulate electronic health records (EHRs) and shared their visions for the ideal online platform at a second "town hall" meeting here Tuesday.
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DAS28-CRP or DAS28-ESR: Are they Biosimilar? (Best of 2015)
The disease activity score (DAS28) has been developed as a dynamic assessment tool and a therapeutic response measure for use in clinical trials and practice.
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Herpes Zoster Increases the Risk of Stroke and MI
At the 2015 ACR annual meeting in San Francisco, Len Calabrese, DO, of the Cleveland Clinic, gave a plenary session talk linking "shingles" infection to an increased risk of CVA (
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RA Guidelines, Methotrexate and Mortal Risks in Gout: November 2015 top social media news
Here's what you may have missed: in November 2015, RheumNow published 80 tweets on news, research and teaching points that impact the rheumatology community. We had a reach (impressions) of 79,100, 79 mentions, and over 3399 visits to RheumNow.com to check out what we publish.
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Skin Cancer Risk in ANCA+ Vasculitis
Previously, granulomatous polyangitis (GPA or Wegener's) was known to have an increase risk of cancer, especially bladder cancer, presumeably due to cyclophosphamide (CTX) exposure.
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In RA TNF-Inhibitors Prove To Be Durable Choice
Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were less likely to discontinue their first biologic when that treatment was a tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitor than if it was a non-TNF biologic, and especially if treatment was initiated prior to 2005.
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Chronic Digital Ulcers in Systemic Sclerosis Portends More Complications
A prospective, international observational study of systemic sclerosis patients enrolled in the Digital Ulcers Outcome (DUO) Registry: Patients were required to have ≥3 follow-up visits over at least a 2 year observation period between 2008-2013.
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Opioid Use Ups the Risk of Hospitalized Infections in Rheumatoid Arthritis
Researchers from Vanderbilt University have studied the issue of opioid use in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and whether this influences infection risk.
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Psoriasis May Not Be a Risk for CV Events
Patients with psoriatic skin and joint disease are uniquely susceptible to multiple comorbidities, obesity and possibly more cardiovascular risks. In rheumatoid arthritis, the increased CV risk and CV events have been closely aligned with inflammation and disease activity.
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