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Efficacy of Maintaining or Switching to Baricitinib Monotherapy
A post hoc analysis of baricitinib use in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients shows that while many patients respond well to baricitinib monotherapy or to switching to baricitinib monotherapy, those with less disease control respond well to the addition of methotrexate (MTX) to baricitinb.&nb
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FDA AAC Splits Vote in Favor of Nintedanib for Scleroderma Interstitial Lung Disease
The FDA convened Arthritis Advisory Committee to consider nintedanib for the treatment of systemic sclerosis-associated interstitial lung disease (SSc-ILD) and voted 10-7 in favor of approving the drug for this new indication.
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FINCH2: Filgotinib in Biologic Refractory Rheumatoid Arthritis
The FINCH2 study has shown that filgotinib, an oral once daily JAK 1 inhibitor, is highly effective in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients who failed to respond to prior biologic therapy.
Read ArticleRisk of Major Gastrointestinal Bleeding With New vs Conventional Oral Anticoagulants
The comparative risk for gastrointestinal bleeding (GIB) with non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants (NOACs) was compared to vitamin K antagonists or anti-platelet agents in a recent metanalysis, which showed no significant difference in major GIB events between these agents.
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War on RA - Part 1: Walk on the Moon
It’s a great time to be a rheumatologist and to manage RA. But, if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to keep getting what you’ve got.
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Partial or Total Knee Replacement for Osteoarthritis?
Lancet has reported on a clinical trial comparing total knee replacement (TKR) and partial knee replacement (PKR) in late-stage isolated medial compartment knee osteoarthritis patients finding that both TKR and PKR are equally effective, PKR should be considered the first, because of lower costs
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FDA Approves Apremilast for Behcet's Oral Ulcers
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved apremilast (Otezla) for the treatment of oral ulcers associated with Behçet’s Disease, a rare chronic multisystem inflammatory disease that affects about 5 in 100,000 persons in the USA.
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RheumNow Podcast – Don’t Take My Advice (7.19.19)
Dr. Jack Cush reports the news and new journal articles from the past week on RheumNow.com.
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Fatigue is Driven by Inflammation, Pain, and Chronicity in Psoriatic Arthritis
Correlates with fatigue were assessed in psoriatic arthritis (PsA) patients in the DANBIO registry and found to be associated with clinical inflammatory factors, disease duration, and chronic pain.
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Upadacitinib Superior to Adalimumab in Methotrexate Refractory RA
Upadacitinib, a JAK1-selective inhibitor, was studied head to head against adalimumab and placebo in rheumatoid arthritis after an inadequate response to methotrexate, and shown to be superior to ADA and PBO in ACR20 and DAS remission level responses.
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Cardiovascular Disease Increased in Hospitalized Lupus Patients
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients who are hospitalized have an increased prevalence of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) and its individual phenotypes of coronary artery disease (CAD), peripheral artery disease (PAD), and cerebrovascular disease.
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Rituximab Safety Concerns when Used in anti-TNF Refractory RA
The SUNSTONE study evaluated the long‐term safety of rituximab in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) previously exposed to ≥1 anti–tumor necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi) and showed a stable, but high, rate of serious infections, opportunistic infections and an overall higher mortality rate.
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Rituximab Superior to Cyclosporine for Membranous Nephropathy
The NEJM has reported that rituximab (RTX) and cyclosporine (CYA) was noninferior to cyclosporine in inducing complete or partial remission of proteinuria at 12 months and was superior in maintaining proteinuria remission up to 24 months.
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RheumNow Podcast – Boiling Hot MAS (7.12.19)
Dr. Jack Cush reviews this week's news and journal reports featured on RheumNow.com. PsA v. non-PsA pregnancies, Still's disease, lupus, nutritional supplements and dietary interventions, use of cannabis, tanezumab in OA, CBD oils and more.
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EHR-Related Adverse Events Usually Involve Medications
Concerns about the unintended risks inherent in electronic health records (EHR) by analysis of EHR–related harms identified from large database of malpractice suits and claims; they found that EHR related adverse events exist, and may be associated with an severe harms and uncommonly, death.
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Safety Concerns Offset the Modest Improvements of Tanezumab in Osteoarthritis
JAMA reports that although tanezumab is modestly effective in moderate to severe osteoarthritis (knee or hip), with statistically significant improvements in pain and physical function, the tanezumab (TNZ) treated patients had more joint safety events and total joint replacements than pa
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Pregnancy Outcomes Improve in Lupus
Pregnancy for patients with lupus has long been considered high risk and associated with both medical and obstetric complications, but outcomes have improved over the last 2 decades and continue to improve. The large decline in in-hospital maternal mortality was greater for lupus pregnancies than for non-lupus pregnancies. Findings from a retrospective cohort study are published in Annals of Internal Medicine.
Opioids Overused in Acute Gout
Opioids were commonly given to patients as a treatment for acute gout attacks, despite the availability of other effective and appropriate therapies, a retrospective study found.
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Benefits vs Harms for Osteoporosis Drug Continuation or Discontinuation
While it is clear that long-term bisphosphonate therapies reduce fracture risk in women with osteoporosis, it is unclear how to counter-balance these benefits against rare serious harms and how to optimize therapeutic benefits with appropriate drug holidays.
A systematic analysis of 48 studies compared long-term osteoporosis drug treatment (ODT) (>3 years) versus control versus ODT continuation versus durg discontinuation, to examine incident fractures or harms.
Be ‘on point’: Guidelines for rheumatic complications of immunotherapy
Editor's note: July 1 - 5, RheumNow is running the best of the EULAR 2019 meeting. At EULAR 2019, Madrid, several recommendations including RA, SLE, and Sjogren’s syndrome have been developed. Agreement for principles with respect to the treatment of immune mediated adverse events from cancer immunotherapy are lacking.
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