Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) has completed its $74 billion acquisition of Celgene. With the acquisition complete, Celgene is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of BMS. The combined companies have nine products with more than $1 billion in annual sales.

Therapies targeting sUA accumulation or improving its excretion are widely used for treatment of symptoms and prevention of progression of gout for decades. Despite our best effort, there is still a significant amount of patients who remain symptomatic and/or experiences progressive joint damage and disability. Regardless of the cause, either its lack of compliance or poor tolerability, more effective treatments are needed.

I have been attending the ACR Review Course for more than a decade, and it seems every year it gets better and better. Contrary to what most people think, this is not a board review course; it is more of a review of the latest research delivered by experts condensing rheumatology in eight hours.

This ACR has seen some more great work on tapering of therapy in rheumatoid arthritis. It’s a hot topic and one which I get asked about all the time by my patients. Commonly when I start oral csDMARDs patients want to know how long they be will on therapy and that naturally leads to a discussion about what the plan will be in the future about tapering.

Shingrix (GSK), the herpes zoster subunit vaccine (a two-shot series), was approved by the FDA in Fall 2018 and is currently approved for use in adults 50 years and older. Shingrix has replaced the live zoster vaccine, Zostavax (Merck) as the preferred shingles vaccine, however its use in patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) remains a gray area.

Dr. Jack Cush recaps standout presentations and information from ACR 2019 held in Atlanta November 9-12, 2019.

Largely because it can be difficult to do studies in pregnant women, gaps remain in the area of rheumatic disease in pregnancy. This year’s ACR highlights some important new points to consider.

Here's my summary of key studies presented Tuesday.  Tofacitinib in Polyarticular JIA

Below are several of the highlight studies in psoriatic arthritis (PsA) presented at the ACR 2019 annual meeting in Atlanta.