JAMA has published the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study showing that that, from 2002 to 2016, the US burden of chronic kidney disease (CKD) increased, with some states exhibiting more than twice the burden as others. The increase in burden was associated with increased metabolic and dietary risk exposure that manifested in increased probability of death due to diabetic CKD, especially for those between 20 to 55 years.  

The Gerontological Society of America has published a report calling for deprescribing as a means of managing polypharmacy in the elderly.

A comparative cohort study assessing the quality of care in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) suggests that a dedicated lupus clinic has better quality measure performance compared to lupus management in a general rheumatology clinic. A study from Rush University enrolled 150 consecutive SLE patients - with 73 followed in the general rheumatology clinic and 77 followed in a dedicated lupus clinic. 

B-cell depletion may offer a means of delaying the onset of clinical arthritis in adults at high risk, according to the PRAIRI study - a proof-of-mechanism study in pre-clinical RA patients. 

The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and National Psoriasis Foundation (NPF) have released a joint treatment guideline for psoriatic arthritis (PsA) that provides evidence-based pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic recommendations and includes recommendations on other management issues including vaccinations, psoriatic spondylitis, enthesitis, and treatment in the presence of inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, or serious infections.

Researchers from MIT have developed a novel treatment for osteoarthritis (OA) by using dendrimer-based nanocarriers to deliver insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) to chondrocytes within joint cartilage and in animal models have shown when these nanocarriers injected into rat knees in models of OA, they reduced cartilage degeneration.