Continuously elevated serum matrix metalloproteinase-3 (MMP-3) for 3-6 months predicted 1-year radiographic progression in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), according to a small prospective cohort study in Arthritis Research and Therapy.
Prescription drugs may cost up to 10 times more in the United States than they do in other countries, according to a 2013 Comparative Price Report was released last month by the International Federation of Health Plans (IFHP). Results are based on surveys of the prices of prescription drugs from member plans.
A number of studies have shown that the treat-to-target approach is effective in achieving clinical remission - the ultimate therapeutic goal in patients with early RA.
The OPERA study was a 2-year investigator-initiated, double-blinded, randomized, controlled trial to evaluate the clinical and radiographic outcomes in DMARD naïve, early RA patients who are begun on methotrexate, with or without adalimumab induction therapy.
Lesinurad is a novel URAT-1 inhibitor being developed as a urate-lowering therapy for gout by Astra-Zeneca.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has raised questions about the safety of this new drug as the application for drug approval is slated for review later this week. Specifically, the FDA has concerns over higher death rates, cardiovascular issues and kidney-related side effects for those taking lesinurad.
A recent presentation at the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (EADV) meeting in Copenhagen showed the long-term outcomes of weight loss in psoriasis.
I think this will be my 35th ACR meeting. Meetings such as ACR are family events as much as they are scientific events, meant to be celebrated with food and your favorite legal beverage, which in my case is wine.
A reprise of a prior blog on the "best kinds of arthritis" to have. This time with more commentary and good news.
Zhang and colleagues from Boston analyzed patients with physician diagnosed sleep apnea from The Health Improvement Network in the UK and compared these with 5 controls (age, sex, BMI matched). They studied 9,865 patients with sleep apnea and 43,598 controls. Using a Cox proportional hazards models, the team analyzed the incidence rates of gout with relation to sleep apnea.
A retrospective analysis examined whether it's better to initiate urate-lowering therapy (ULT) during or after an attack of acute gout.
UK investigators have shown that rheumatoid arthritis patients with bronchiectasis (BRRA) have a five-fold increased mortality compared to RA without bronchiectasis. It is unclear if serologic differences, activity measures and biomarkers may be different in this cohort. (Citation source: http://buff.ly/1M1m5sV)
Using data from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS), Sparks and colleagues analyzed 119,209 women beginning in 1976. The identified 964 incident RA cases and 28,808 deaths during 36 years of prospective follow-up. This included 307 women with RA who died, 80 (26%) from cancer, 70 (23%) from CVD, and 44 (14%) were respiratory causes.
Hospital consults – “nobody goes there anymore”, and not because it’s too crowded (a quote from the late great Yogi Berra), but rather because it’s a poor investment of time and resources.
In the USA, toxoplasmosis is the second leading cause of foodborne illness–related death and hospitalization, with >300 deaths and 4000 hospitalizations each year [2]; 4800 people develop visual loss yearly secondary to the parasite. Cats, humans, and other warm-blooded animals, become hosts after being infected by ingestion of food or water contaminated by cat feces or by consumption of meat containing toxoplasma cysts.
Healio.com reports that pregnant women with APL antibodies and who took Plaquenil (HCQ or hydroxychloroquine) had better pregnancy outcomes than those who did not.
Patients in the U.S. with myositis who are positive for the anti-MDA5 autoantibody are at high risk for developing interstitial lung disease (ILD), a retrospective study found.
