The American Gastroenterology Association has published its revised clinical practice guidelines for the prevention and treatment of hepatitis B virus (HBV) reactivation in at-risk patients, particularly those with immune-mediated disease, receiving immunomodulatory therapy and steroids.

A study from the FDA's adverse event reporting system (FAERS or Medwatch) database identified cases of drug induced systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in patients receiving tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) inhibitors - a paradoxical reaction to common antiinflammatory biologic agents.

A 24 year, prospective study analyzing very early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in three consecutive eras suggests that RA has evolved since 2005, demonstrating less seropositivity, inflammation, and erosions but is characterized by more comorbidity, smoking and corticosteroid use.

Analysis of a Greek Psoriatic Arthritis (PsA) cohort shows that nearly one quarter of patients have axial involvement, and among them, ∼30% have isolated spinal axPsA and nr-axSpA, respectively.

Some dietary habits are worse than others when it comes to gout risk for women, a large study indicated. Data from the two iterations of the Nurses' Health Study, in which more than 170,000 women were followed for more than two decades, indicated that diets scoring high on the Empirical Dietary Inflammatory Pattern (EDIP) index nearly doubled the risk for new-onset gout after adjusting for body mass index.

At a EULAR 2025 session titled “What makes ‘Difficult-to-treat RA’ so difficult to treat? And what can we do?”, Drs. Paula David and Dennis McGonagle introduced the emerging concept of polyrefractory rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a term now being used to describe a subset of patients who have failed to respond to five or more biologic or targeted synthetic DMARDs. This new classification, derived from recent multinational registry data, represents a significant step in refining our understanding and management of the most treatment-resistant forms of RA.

Dr. Jack Cush reviews the news and journal reports from last week on RheumNow.com

A single center study shows HLA-B27 testing is often performed by both by rheumatologists and nonrheumatologists for a wide array of reasons and often along with other serologic tests. Optimal use of HLA-B27 testing has yet to be defined.

Most patients with early, active axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA) who quickly received a tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitor experienced remission, and it didn't matter whether or not they had intestinal inflammation at baseline, a small single-arm study found.