Analysis of a German Crohn's disease cohort finds that in patients with early Crohn’s disease (CD), spondyloarthritis was present in nearly one out of five patients and was associated with HLA-B27 positivity and a highly active CD.

A recent prospective, randomized, blinded clinical trial has shown that a 2 week hold of methotrexate (MTX) following COVID-19 (Sinovac-CoronaVac) vaccination resulted in greater anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunogenicity; but there was an increase in flare rates after the second dose of vaccine.

Data from the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology Coronavirus Vaccine registry shows that patients with with inflammatory or noninflammatory rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease have similar adverse event rates as the general public.

Drs. Jack Cush and Artie Kavanaugh review the highlights of the RWCS (Rheumatology Winter Clinical Symposium) from Maui.

The results of the VITAL study (presented at ACR 2021) are now published by BMJ, showing that vitamin D and omega 3 fatty acids reduce the overall risk of autoimmune disease (AID) in a population based intervention trial.

Dr. Jack Cush reviews the news and journal articles from the past week on RheumNow.com.  This week a trifecta of Gout reports and the last word on the ORAL Surveillance study...

In an editorial in the current edition of the NEJM, Dr. Jasvinder Singh comments on the Oral Surveillance trial (Ytterberg et al.), a 4-year randomized, open-label, noninferiority, postauthorization, safety end-point trial, in high risk active rheumatoid arthritis patients over age 50 years.

For adults aged ≥18 years who received 2 doses of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, a third dose increased vaccine effectiveness (prevention of hospitalization) among adults without (82% to 97%) and with immunocompromising conditions (69% to 88%), with near similar efficacy.

On Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved risankizumab-rzaa (Skyrizi) for the treatment of adults with active psoriatic arthritis (PsA), with similar dosing in plaque psoriasis - a single 150mg subcutaneous injection four times a year after two starter doses (at weeks 0

Today, UCB announced top-line interim analysis results from their Phase 3 "BE MOBILE 1" study, that demonstrated the efficacy of bimekizumab, a dual IL-17A and F inhibitor, in adults with active non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis (nr-axSpA).