Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is clearly not related to rheumatoid arthritis and until recently has no identifiabile autoantigen linked to JIA.

Arkema and colleagues assessed maternal and fetal outcomes in patients with SLE, pre-clinical (prior to onset) SLE and prevalent maternal SLE during pregnancy compared with the general population.

Will the results of two recent large scleroderma lung studies finally inform us on how to manage interstitial lung disease in systemic sclerosis?  

Highlights from this week on RheumNow:

Hip and knee intraarticular injection of corticosteroids are frequently prescribed to alleviate pain or inflammation in patients with osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, especially in the period leading up to scheduled arthroplasty. The safety of preoperative hip injections was discussed at a presentation at the recent 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS).

Three million Americans are diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome each year.  New guidelines issued by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) recommends a thorough patient history and specific physical examination maneuvers to diagnose CTS; specifically, they do not recommed the use of MRI for CTS diagnosis. The guidelines are available at orthoguidelines.org.

Muscle weakness was independently associated with disability in patients with scleroderma, and as muscle weakness worsened, disability also increased, according to findings from a retrospective, nested, case control study.

Chronic liver disease, and in particular hepatitis B infection, is a contraindication to methotrexate (MTX) use.