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MOST Study: End Stage Knee Osteoarthritis Shows Dynamic Change by MRI
Guermazi and colleagues have investigated whether end-stage knee osteoarthritis (OA), assessed as grade 4 Kellgren and Lawrence (KL) radiographic changes, are really "end stage".
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Life Expectancy Rises, but People Living Longer with More Illness
Lancet has reported that people are living 6.2 years longer, worldside since 1990. Yet, there has been a rise in illness and disability,and a complex mix of fatal and non-fatal ailments leading to a large amount of health loss.
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Increased Vascular Mortality in Ankylosing Spondylitis
Haroon et al has analyzed administrative claims data from Ontario, Canada and compared 21473 AS patients with 86606 normal comparators matched for age, sex, and location of residence.
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Growth Hormone Protects Against Osteoporotic Fractures
In a decade-long study of the effects of growth hormone (GH), 80 women with osteoporosis on HRT, between ages of 50-70 yrs were randomized to receive GH 1.0 U or GH 2.5 U recombinant human GH or placebo sc daily during 3 years and compared to an age-matched populatoin sample of (n=120).
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Early RA and the Chance of DMARD-Free Remission
Early and aggressive treatment of rheumatoid arthritis has become the mantra for most who manage the disease and hope to achieve optimal outcomes - including remission.
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BMI at Age 20 Influences Future Risk of Low Back Pain
A nationwide, cross-sectional study of men aged 30–50 years (n=1385) examined the relationship between weight and back pain over time.
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Serious Infections are Increasing in Lupus
Tektonidou and coworkers have analyzed hospitalized serious infections (SIE) involving lupus patients over a 15 year period and show that SIE in SLE have increased substantially between 1996 and 2011, and in 2011 are 12 times higher than seen in patients without SLE.
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Enthesitis Ultrasound as an Outcome Measure in Spondyloarthritis
Musculoskeletal ultrasound (US) was recently used in a longitudinal study Achilles enthesis of 146 patients with early spondyloarthritis (SpA). Usual measures of SpA activity included BASFI, BASRI-spine, BASDAI and Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Score (ASDAS).
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Cancer Risk Is Both Increased and Decreased in RA
Rheumatoid arthritis patients are often said to have no or a low risk of cancer.
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Statins Improve CV risk in RA
Since publication of the Jupiter trial that showed statin effects may include the lowering of C-reactive protein levels and inflammation, there have been several efforts to study the adjunctive effects of statins in rheumatoid arthritis treatment.
Read ArticleMinority of Nonradiographic-Axial SpA Patients will Progress to Ankylosing Spondylitis
Wang and coworkers from the Rochester Epidemiology Project presented their findings at the annual Spondyloarthritis Research and Treatment Network.(SPARTAN) in Denver, CO.
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Safety Reports in the News
Can We Do Better than FAERS? Brian Overstreet (of Adverseevents.com) has written on MedPageToday.com about the current state of adverse event reporting.
Read ArticleCDC Report: 22% of USA Population is Disabled
CDC has released the findings of its 2013 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), with 5 questions addressing different forms of disability - vision, cognition, mobility, self-care, and independent living. Overall, 22.2% of U.S. adults (53,316,677 persons) reported any disability.
Read ArticleB cell Inhibition with Epratuzumab Fails in Two Phase III Lupus Trials
Targeting B cells in systemic lupus erythematosus, the prototypic autoimmune disorder, has long been an attractive target for researchers. Despite negative trials with rituximab and the limited success of belimumab, efforts to inhibit B cell activity have continued.
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Men and Blacks Undertreated for Osteoporosis
Using claims data from 36,965 patients in an Indiana database, researchers found women (OR 1.86) and non-black patients (OR 1.52) were more likely to be treated (p<0.001) for osteoporosis.
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Tacrolimus Tops Other DMARDs as Induction Therapy for Lupus Nephritis
Metanalysis of nine clinical trials and 972 lupus patients examined the comparative efficacy of tacrolimus, mycophenolate (MMF) and cyclophosphamide (CYC) as induction therapy for lupus nephritis.
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Long term Denosumab Use Shows Favorable Outcomes: Results from the FREEDOM Extension Trial
Osteoporosis is a disease characterized by increased bone loss that outpaces the grown of new bone. As a result bones become less dense and more fragile and brittle; porous bones are more prone to fracture.
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Increasing Age May Increase Miscarriage Risk in RA
At EULAR 2015, Brouwer and colleagues reported on their cohort of 162 evaluable pregnancies in 239 Dutch women enrolled during 2002-2010 in the nationwide Pregnancy-Induced Amelioration of Rheumatoid Arthritis (PARA) study – a large prospective cohort of pregnant RA patients.
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The High Cost and Burden of Sepsis
One million people are hospitalized each year with sepsis. This is more than the number of hospitalizations for heart attack and stroke combined. Sepsis can be a particular risk for older people.
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Get Ready for ICD-10
With three months until the switch from ICD-9 to ICD-10 coding, CMS and the AMA have announced efforts to continue to help physicians get ready ahead of the October 1 deadline.
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