The American College of Rheumatology praised the recent announcement from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that their initial drug pricing negotiations have reduced costs for select medications, including significantly lower prices for Enbrel and Stelara, which are frequently used to treat rheumatic diseases.

Dr. Jack Cush reviews the news and journal reports from the past week on RheumNow.com, noting his concerns about diet, cancer, ILD, death and dosing challenges.

Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) patients not responding to usual dosing with secukinumab (150 mg) after 16 weeks were dose escalated to secukinumab (SEC) 300 mg, but failed to show improvement by week 52.

JAMA Dermatology has published a review of dermatomyositis (DM), focusing on similar and different manifestations of DM.

DM affects all races, but it has been suggested that racial and ethnic minority patients may have more severe disease and a different autoantibody profile. This analysis characterizes the clinical features and outcomes of DM in Hispanic and non-Hispanic patients.

A recent article in PLOS ONE has shown that treatment of type 2 diabetes with glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1-RAs) was associated with a significant lowering of risk of all-cause mortality and major adverse cardiovascular events in patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases and type 2 diabetes.

Sjögren's disease is a chronic autoimmune condition without a clear effective therapy - DMARD or biologic. The TWINSS study has demonstrated the safety and efficacy of iscalimab, a monoclonal antibody against CD40, in a phase 2 randomized clinical trial of active Sjögren's disease (SD).

A Canadian cohort of difficult-to-treat rheumatoid arthritis (D2T RA) patients shows significantly more non-inflammatory pain in D2T RA compared to patients responding to b/tsDMARDs.

A recent study that quantified the economic and humanistic burden of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in the USA showed significantly higher health care expenditures, particularly medication costs, and suboptimal quality of life in RA.

A matched cohort study from the Veterans Health Administration shows that rheumatoid arthritis patients have a >50% increased risk of lung cancer, and a 3-fold higher risk of lung cancer in RA-interstitial lung disease (ILD).