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

Correlates with fatigue were assessed in psoriatic arthritis (PsA) patients in the DANBIO registry and found to be associated with  clinical inflammatory factors, disease duration, and chronic pain. A toital of 2062 PsA patients in the Danish nationwide registry DANBIO were studied by cross-sectional survey from December 2013 to June 2014.

A novel compound, synthetic trans‐capsaicin (CNTX‐4975), has been studied as an intraarticular injection and shown to significantly reduce pain in patients with chronic moderate‐to‐severe osteoarthritis of the knee. A phase II, multicenter, double‐blind study enrolled 172 knee OA patients between the ages of 45–80 years. Patients were randomized to receive either intraarticular placebo, or a high‐purity synthetic trans‐capsaicin CNTX‐4975 0.5

Hip and knee osteoarthritis patients have been shown to have increased mortality rates from cardiovascular events when compared to the general population. The study included patients in the Skåne Healthcare Register from southern Sweden who were 45–84 years old and seen over 2004-2014. Overall, there were 15,901 such patients in the study.

Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome affects at least 2 million people in the United States and bears tremendous overlap with fibromyalgia - both being difficult to diagnosis because the symptom complex is often unrecognized and these conditions have no biomarker test.