Dr. Jack Cush reviews the news and journal articles from this past week on RheumNow.com.  New regulatory decisions about JAK inhibitors and why do women with rheumatic diseases have unfair outcomes?

The number of new diagnoses of rheumatoid arthritis fell by 20% in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, new research suggests.

Treat-to-target management of SLE has been shown to protect against organ damage and to improve quality of life. Now a prospective study shows that T2T with a goal of lupus low disease activity state and remission has been shown to improve mortality risk.

The CDC has updated its Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain and includes recommendations for managing acute (duration of <1 month), subacute (duration of 1–3 months), and chronic (duration of >3 months) pain.

The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) has released Continuing Medical Education (CME) for dermatologists and nephrologists to help them learn more about clinical trials for lupus patients in their respective treatment areas and the importance of getting more of their African American/Black patients enrolled.

Remission often invites consideration of drug withdrawal in patients with axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA). Now an open label study of ixekizumab (IXE) treated axSpA patients in remission has shown that the vast majority of IXE withdrawal patients who later flared were able to recapture disease control. 

Evidence on gender equity in academic rheumatology in Europe is currently limited. This knowledge gap has a direct effect on the ability of professional bodies to improve gender equity. To address this, EULAR designed a study using web-based surveys to collect information; here are the results.

Alcohol consumption is a leading preventable cause of death in the U.S.  A JAMA cross-sectional study suggests that between 2015 and 2019, an estimated 1 in 8 total deaths among U.S. adults ages 20 to 64 were attributable to excessive alcohol use, including 1 in 5 deaths among adults ages 20 to 49. 

The European Medicines Agency’s (EMA's) safety committee (PRAC) has issued a recommendation that the use of oral JAK inhibitors (tofacitinib, baricitinib, upadacitinib and filgotinib) be limited to certain at-risk patients unless no other suitable treatment alternatives are available.

I recently heard of a secondary school assignment wherein students were challenged to “bury” a word that was no longer useful or appropriate. Their exercise has now evolved into an unofficial RheumNow task force to retire diagnostic terms that have grown into misuse in rheumatology and medicine. How did we decide which words should perish? And by what criteria? Who has the final say?

Dr. Jack Cush discusses the news and journal reports from the past week on RheumNow. This week more lupus nephritis, more drug induced lupus and more lupus infections that may kill. 

Today, Cardinal Health released its third edition of Rheumatology Insights, a research report based on surveys with more than 100 rheumatologists nationwide that focuses on key trends impacting one of the fastest-growing areas of specialty medicine. 

 Analysis of a national database of hospital discharges from Spain shows that infections accounted for 25% of lupus deaths, making infection the most common cause of death in SLE.

EULAR and the Assessment of SpondyloArthritis International Society (ASAS) has updated their guidance on axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA) management. The revision included 15 recommendations in total. Of these, 11 either remained the same from earlier editions or involved minor wording changes. Two, however, differed substantially, and two others were entirely new.

Newly released guidance for defining remission in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is expected to increase the number of patients achieving it while maintaining its ability to predict good objective outcomes.