JAMA has published a meta-analysis of 15 studies of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 treated with tocilizumab and corticosteroids, showing that a clinically meaningful mortality benefit from tocilizumab (and steroids) was best seen in those not requiring invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV).

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

This podcast is sponsored by RheumNow.live. The great future of rheumatology education is at RNL 2022.

The ACR has updated its clinical guidelines for the management of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), with this update focusing on oligoarthritis, TMJ arthritis, and systemic JIA (with and without macrophage activation syndrome); only the latter, systemic JIA recommendations are reported he

Drug survival may be the best measure of efficacy and safety. A new study of novel therapy durability (survival) in patients with RA, axial spondyloarthritis, PsA, and psoriasis shows that while all these drugs are approved for said conditions, drug survival varies by condition, suggesting an ongoing need for individualized treatment.

The ACR journal, Arthritis & Rheumatology, has publish a listing of top articles in 2021 as measured by Altmetric, an online service that tracks what gets "clicked" and discussed.  Interestingly, this includes 4 guidelines and 5 COVID-related papers.

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.