Dr. Jack Cush reviews the news and highlights from the past week on RheumNow.com. This week he covers FDA warnings on gout drugs, steroid use in Australia, biosimilars lost savings and methotrexate hepatotoxicity in psoriatic arthritis (PsA).

Reuters reports that  U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has declaed it would classify illicit versions of fentanyl at the same level as heroin, allowing criminal prosecution of anyone who possesses, distributes or manufactures illicit versions of the drug.

The following is a collection of gout-specific mentions culled from RheumNow's coverage of the Annual ACR 2017 meeting in San Diego.

Care to learn what you missed at last weeks ACR 2017 meeting in San Diego?  Here are 4 one hour audio podcasts - each with a compliation of 2-4 minute reports from Drs. Cush, Kavanaugh, the RheumNow Faculty and other rheumatology thought leaders and researchers.  Another good way to learn from RheumNow.

This special edition of the RheumNow Week in Review covers highlights of selected sessions from the 2017 ACR annual meeting in San Diego. Dr.

Check out this compilation of our ACR17 Day 3 broadcasts, merged into a single one hour podcast !

Reduction on radiographic progression has now become the standard of care in the therapies used to treat psoriatic arthritis and, during the 2017 ACR Meeting, several agents reported the results of their studies with radiographic endpoints.

Day 3 at the annual meeting was rich with information. Yet the most anticipated and best attended session was the Late Breaking Abstracts and the session revealing the new ACR/NPF Guidelines for Psoriatic Arthritis (more on the latter in another report).  Day 4 was full of review sessions and a modicum of original content and for me, the 7:30AM Rheumatology Roundup.

With ACR 2017 winding down and the sheer volume of information seemingly overwhelming, I wanted to take the time to write an article regarding a few tips I learned that I will use in clinical practice.

A number of presentations over the past few days have addressed the health economics of SLE.

While the incidence of pneumocystis pneumonia (PJP) is low is patients with rheumatologic diseases the mortality is quite high compared to PJP in patients with HIV and infection can be prevented with appropriate prophylaxis.

In this session we were given new data on ustekinumab for SLE (

In the registration trials for febuxostat there were concerns about a cardiovascular (CV) safety signal. In studies of the effect of allopurinol on CV risk/events allopurinol has found to be protective so whether febuxostat is different is a point to clarify.

Today the draft of the new EULAR/ACR lupus classification criteria was presented at the ACR 2017.

During today’s plenary session Micheal D. George, et al. presented results of a study that sought to compare risk of post-op infections in RA patients undergoing arthroplasty exposed to biologic DMARDs versus methotrexate.

As a follow up to Dr. Will Harvey’s lecture at ACR 2017 (session title: Holy MACRA! How to Survive and Thrive in the New Era of MACRA, MIPS, and APMs), here are the keys for reporting your collections.

With the emergence of new MOAs for the treatment of psoriatic arthritis in recent years, the most burning question remained if newer agents would perform as well in terms of radiographic progression as they did in clinical domains.

We take many things for granted. I walked 11,151 steps today going from sessions to posters and exhibit halls to learn as much as I can to take back to my clinic so I can help my patients.  My feet were hurting, and my back bothered me as I tried to get comfortable for the next lecture; yet, these minor discomforts are nothing compared to what our patients experience on a daily basis.

Check out this compilation of our ACR17 Day 2 videocasts merged into a one hour podcast !

In the afternoon on Monday, the ACR ran a clinical symposium on gout. One presentation stood out, on “Asymptomatic hyperuricemia” (AH) by M. Pillinger, MD from NYU Medical School. At issue is when should AH be treated.