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RheumNow Week in Review – 5 August 2016
Highlights from this week on RheumNow.com include:
1. Having #RA in addition to solid cancer (breast, lung, prostate, colon) increases mortality rates by 40-50% in elders https://t.co/aitjusmOai
2. The global market for rheumatoid arthritis therapies was $19.9 billion in 2015, expected to reach $21.3B by 2020 https://t.co/d2Sh5C8y9f
3. Half of doctors never heard of MACRA:Medicare Access & CHIP Reauthorization Act. Starts on Jan 1st! https://t.co/eYgWBWCw6y Blog:https://t.co/sRKZSOFyNV
And more!
Serious Infections are Not Increased in HIV Patients Treated with TNF Inhibitors
Infections are a concern for many when using tumor necrosis factor-α inhibitor (TNFi) therapy to treat inflammatory disorders. Even moreso in those at higher risk.
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RAPID3: An Effective Assessment Tool in Spondyloarthritis
Serial biomarker or clinical metric assessments are ubiquitous and commonly used to assess patients with rheumatoid arthritis (HAQ, CDAI, RAPID3), lupus (C3, C4, dsDNA) and gout (uric acid). But numerous disorders are either harder to assess or have tools or metrics that that are not commonly used.
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Nerve Growth Factor Inhibitor Compounds Cartilage Loss in Osteoarthritis
Nerve growth factor (NGF) is a key modulator of pain perception, Inhibitors of NGF are being studied in several chronic pain conditions, including osteoarthritis (OA).
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Problems with Red Flags in Diagnosing Low Back Pain
There is considerable heterogeneity in "red flags" amongst numerous low back pain (LBP) guidelines worldwide. A "red flags" denotes a finding, which if present, imparts a significantly high risk of underlying serious spinal pathology with considerable subsequent morbidity or mortality.
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Biosimilars are Bioequivalent to Original TNF Inhibitors
Chingcuanco and coinvestigators have reported on their comparative analysis of biosimilars and their originator TNF inhibitors in the current issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. (Citation source: http://buff.ly/2arTd1q)
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Meniscal Tears May Not Need Surgery
A study published in the British Medical Journal examines whether knee surgery or conservative medical management benefits those with degenerative meniscal tears. (Citation source http://buff.ly/2awVbKu)
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Long-Term Safety of Adalimumab Reviewed
Burmester and colleagues have published their review of the long-term outcomes and safety issues with the TNF inhibitor, adalimumab (ADA). The analysis included 15,132 patients exposed to adalimumab in global RA clinical trials.
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Pravastatin Improves Obstetric Outcomes in Anti-Phospholipid Syndrome Patients
Pregnancy complications of anti-phospholipid syndrome (APS) have included recurrent abortions, spontaneous fetal loss, preeclampsia, and premature birth. The etiopathogenesis of these events has been presumed to be placental thrombosis or infarction.
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Novel Rise of Combined Dermatology-Rheumatology Clinics
Rheumatology News has a novel online report about combined rheumatology-dermatology clinics. In the last several years, there have been a few of these in operation (Boston, Chicago, Rhode Island).
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Little Evidence Favoring the Health Benefits of Vitamin D
Vitamin D certainly plays a pivotal role in bone health and immune function.
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DEXA Still Needed While on Bisphosphonates
Reuters reports that a study of 6629 Canadian women with osteoporosis taking bisphosphonates found that nearly one in five had a decrease in bone density while on medication. (Citation source: http://buff.ly/2afb7nj)
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ORBIT Study Shows Rituximab is Non-Inferior to TNF Inhibitors in Biologic Naive Patients
Porter and colleagues have reported that both rituximab (RTX) and tumour necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi) are equally and highly effective in early, active, biologic-naive rheumatoid arthritis patients.
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Sandoz Etanercept Biosimilar Voted for Approval by FDA Arthritis Advisory Committee
The Food and Drug Administration’s Arthritis Advisory Committee (AAC) yesterday recommended that the Sandoz etanercept (Enbrel) biosimilar (GP-2015) be approved for use in the United States.
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Gut Microbiome Shapes Risk and Response in Rheumatoid Arthritis
In Genome Medicine, Mayo Clinic researchers investigated a cohort of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients, their relatives and a healthy control group analyzing the gut microbiome vial16S ribosomal DNA analysis of fecal samples.
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Vagal Stimulation Improves Cytokine Production and Rheumatoid Disease Activity
PNAS has published a study wherein an inducible “inflammatory reflex” delivered by vagus nerve stimulation was shown to inhibit the production of tumor necrosis factor (TNF), an inflammatory molecule that is a major therapeutic target in an animal model of rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
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Lupus Patients Genomically Stratified to Explain Treatment Responses
Systemic lupus is a clinically heterogeneous disorder, unified by requisite clinical features and exuberant humoral response to unknown triggers. While the diagnosis is easy, the disease course and management can be complicated and challenging.
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Patient Reluctance to Take Bisphosphonates
The NY Times reports that millions of Americans with osteoporosis are driven to stop or not take bisphosphonate therapies over the fear of exceedingly rare side effects - osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ) and atypical femoral fractures (AFF).
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faSScinate Study Shows Tocilizumab to be Effective in Systemic Sclerosis
The results of the faSScinate trial were published in Lancet showing that treatment with Actemra (tocilizumab) resulted in a reduction in skin thickness and an improvement in lung function in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc).
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Early DMARD Therapy Averts Cardiovascular Risk in RA
A Finnish early RA register studied 14,878 incident RA patients from 2000-2008 and identified 1157 deaths. Patients receiving DMARDs and MTX had lower mortality rates. The standardized mortality ratio for the entire cohort was reduced (0.57, 95% CI 0.52 to 0.62).
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