Since the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines in January 2021, rheumatologists have fully advocated the protective benefits of their use - yet many have rarely noted flares and reactive side effects worrisome to patients. Now a multinational study shows that the use of COVID vaccination in rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease is safe, well-tolerated with very rare serious adverse events.
It's great to be a rheumatologist, but boy, it's getting harder and harder. You have to be a jack of all trades. You have to be good at cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, vaccination, inflammatory bowel disease - it just never ends. This and more, as Dr. Cush summarizes more than a dozen journal articles, news reports and questions + cases.
Safety comparisons of JAKi (tofacitinib) vs. TNFi from Oral Surveillance showed that, in patients with active RA on MTX and aged >50 years with one or more CV risk factors, that there was numerically more MACE events, malignancies, and VTE especially in higher dose.
Based on the safety review of tofacitinib in Pfizer's Oral Surveillance (1133) study, the FDA has added serious boxed warnings to all three marketed JAK inhibitors (for inflammatory diseases) and formalized the recommendation that patients should be started on a TNF inhibitor (TNFi) before trying a JAK inhibitor. These recommendations apply to tofacitinib, baricitinib and upadacitinib.
On Feb. 27, the Food and Drug Administration announced it has issued an emergency use authorization for Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose Covid vaccine, making it the third COVID-19 vaccine to be commercially available. We've compiled a comparison table and some key information relevant to your delivering patient guidance henceforth.
It began as many cases do: an ill patient, in the ICU, with signs and symptoms across several body systems, yet no clear unifying diagnosis on admission. With things stabilizing, the internal medicine hospital team on which I was serving as hospitalist that week assumed care of the patient. As the case unfolded – pulmonary infiltrates that could be hemorrhagic, renal dysfunction with proteinuria – rheumatic diseases rose in the differential.
Dr. Jack Cush reviews and discusses the news and journal reports from the past week on RheumNow.com.
Discussions on drug safety can be as treacherous as quicksand for the patient and physician. What the physician knows and what the patient perceives may not be in sync.
The question as to how autoimmune rheumatic disease patients fare with the COVID vaccine is one being asked in rheumatologists’ offices everywhere this year, and at the EULAR 2021 Virtual Congress, data presented from Israel, one of the first countries to vaccinate on a broad scale, has provided much-needed reassuring answers.
This is the #1 question I get from new consults: “How did I get arthritis?”
But as the aching are asking, they are really thinking these joint complaints must be due to something.
Amazingly, we made it through 2020, a most forgettable year.
Life was great in the first 3 months of 2020, and then COVID hit the fan and a pandemic steamroller derailed life as we knew it.
AstraZeneca announced today that anifrolumab (Saphnelo or anifrolumab-fnia) was approved by the the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for that treatment of adult patients with moderate to severe systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) who are receiving standard therapy.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from RheumNow.
Dr. Jack Cush tells his podcast story - the genesis, keys to success and recommendations on how to get into podcasting - for teaching, practice, fun or influence.
Be sure to register for RheumNow.Live 2022 - March 19 & 20, 2022 in Las Colinas, Texas.
Are you a zoomatologist or a doomsatologist? Zoom has replaced the meeting, the teleconference or the board meeting. If your old meetings were bad, then your replacement zoom meetings will also be bad, if not worse. Largely because you have failed to master the medium. Here are the rules of Zoom.
HCQ is one of the safest meds used in rheumatology, but new claims data suggests a small increase in the risk of malformations associated with first-trimester HCQ use. The March 2021 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology studied the risk of major congenital malformations during the first trimester of pregnancy in women with rheumatic disease taking HCQ.
