Long term Denosumab Use Shows Favorable Outcomes: Results from the FREEDOM Extension Trial

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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.

Women Paid Less as Consultants to Pharma... Again?

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Historically, women’s salaries have lagged behind their male colleagues. Women are less likely to achieve leadership roles or be full professors at academic institutions.

DSB Reports & Updates – July 2015

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FDA Scours the Internet for Safety Signals. A Bloomberg News report shows how the FDA is using Google or Yahoo keyword searches to identify new safety signals or drug interactions, often more than a year before they were brought to light by the FDA based on prior methodologies de

The Use of Non-TNF Biologic Treatments in Uveitis Reviewed

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A systematic review of treatments used in autoimmune chronic uveitis after failure of DMARDs and at least one TNF inhibitor identified few patients (12 children and 34 adults), and few trials examining rituximab (3), abatacept (3), tocilizumab (3), and 1 each with alemtuzumab and anakin

IRB Conflicts of Interest Persist

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Committees at academic institutions that make decisions on research and clinical trials may be conflicted, as nearly one-third of IRB members have some ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

The Differential Diagnosis of Heel Pain

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A slim, yoga bending, middle aged school teacher seeks a rheumatology consultation to determine the cause and cure for her left lateral heel pain for the past 6 months. No trauma, no crazy footwear and no systemic symptoms, uveitis, or peripheral/axial arthritis.

Get Ready for ICD-10

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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.

Rheumatology Leads the List in Drug Company Engagements

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Based on recently released data, ProPublica.org has compiled a list of pharmaceutical payments made to 606,000 US physicians in the last year. Their analysis turned up big differences between the different specialties.

What's Your Diagnosis? Hand Arthritis in 57 year old Man

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A 57 year old male is referred for arthritis of the hands for the last 8 years. He complains of pain, swelling, stiffness in the fingers only. He denies rash, bowel, urologic or ocular complaints. Over-the-counter NSAIDs have provided only partial relief.  

Troponin and BNP in the Diagnosis of Pulmonary Hypertension

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Common cardiac biomarkers could be used to identify patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc) at risk for developing pulmonary hypertension, French researchers reported.

Obesity Drives Rheumatoid Arthritis

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Systematic review of the literature examined whether obesity is associated with a higher risk of rheumatoid arthritis (citation source http://url.ie/z1y6) and found that obese individuals (BMI > 30) are at 

TNF inhibitors in Early Axial SpA Spares NSAID Use

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In a 2 year follow-up of the DESIR cohort of patients with early inflammatory back pain (627 patients), TNF inhibitor use was associated with a significantly greater decrease in the median NSAID intake (from 54.9 to 1.9 in TNFi pts versus from 41.9 to 22.3 in non-TNFi pts, p0.05).

Ustekinumab Bests TNF Inhibitors for Biologic Survival in Psoriasis

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Using drug survival as a global measure of a drug's effectiveness, safety and tolerability, UK investigators used a national pharmacovigilance cohort (British Association of Dermatologists Biologic Interventions Register) to compare survival rates of the first biologic used in 3,523 biologic-naiv

Management of Digital Ulcers in Scleroderma

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Currently there are no FDA-approved medications for the treatment of digital ulcerations in the United States.  Digital ulcers are a common, unfortunate and difficult to manage consequence of the vascular obliteration and fibrosis that accompanies systemic sclerosis.

Adherence to Lupus Meds Linked to Increased Acute Hospitalizations

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Using Medicaid data from 2000-2006, 9,600 hydroxychloroquine new users were compared to 3,829 new users of immunosuppressive agents (IS) in patients with SLE. They assessed adherence using the MPR - the medication possession ratio.

Chikungunya Infection in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients

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Intraarticular Hip Injection of Ketorolac Equals Steroid Responses

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Using ultrasound guided intraarticular injection of the hip, 98 OA of the hip patients were randomized to receive IA ketorolac or triamcinolone. At, 1, 3, and 6 mos pain scale and Harris hip scores were improved equally in both groups with no statistical differences.

Frequency of Infliximab Infusion Reactions

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A Canadian registry shows that in community-based infusion clinics, infusion reactions to IFX are uncommon and mild to moderate in nature.

Common HIPAA Mistakes in Practice

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This review details nine of the most common compliance missteps physicians are making regarding protected health information (PHI). These errors may result in legal trouble, but are avoidable. These include: