Do you know what the best-selling album of all time is? Could it be Bing Crosby? U2? Fleetwood Mac? AC/DC? I know, it’s Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” right? Actually it’s the Eagles Greatest Hits – it surpassed Jackson’s Thriller in August 2019 as the best-selling with a total of 36 million copies sold since it was released in 1976. Wait! Are we not Rheumatologists? Aren’t we supposed to be discussing rheumatoid arthritis?

The ugly, legal, financial underbelly of US biosimilar drug development showed up in court last Friday, when a U.S. judge upheld two of Amgen's patents for Enbrel, thwarting a legal challenge by Novartis/Sandoz over its etanercept-szzs biosimilar, Erelzi.  Sandoz won FDA approval for their etanercept biosimilar in 2016, but has not been able to market Erelzi because of Amgen’s extended patent protection (till 2029).

A longitudinal study from the BRASS registry shows that increase rheumatoid arthritis disease activity increases the risk of RA-associated interstitial lung disease (RA-ILD). RA patients without RA-ILD at baseline, enrolled in the Brigham RA Sequential Study (BRASS, 2003–2016), were followed from 2003-2016 with serial clinical, DAS28, serologic and imaging assessments.