Shingles infection has been historically linked to an increased risk of stroke. A new study found that Zoster Vaccine Live, one type of shingles vaccination, may prevent stroke in some older adults.
A report from The National Databank for Rheumatic Disease addressed the impact of alcohol on disease activity and mortality in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and found that alcohol use was not associated with changes in disease activity or mortality, after addressing confounders.
Recent research from the Lown Institute reports that 750 older Americans are hospitalized daily because of serious side effects from and the core problem is that of polypharmacy, especially in the elderly.
Both allopurinol and febuxostat (Uloric) were associated with an increased risk of hypersensitivity reactions among new users of these urate-lowering therapies, a large U.S. study found.
While the ACR prepares to publish its new guidelines for the diagnosis and management of vasculitis in the Spring of 2020, Dr. John Stone presented his own perspectives on the practical management of vasculitis during the 2019 ACR meeting in Atlanta. He acknowledged that what may be pearls one day, may be disproven with data in the future.
Interleukin 17 IIL-17) is important in the pathogenesis of psoriatic disease, with most current approaches targeting IL-17A. Now there is a noveal approach showing that dual neutralisation of IL-17A and IL-17F in psoriatic arthritis arthritis patients results in clinically significant improvement.
A registry study of metric use (primarily RAPID3 and CDAI) in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients shows that, even in the face of moderate or high disease activity, treatment changes by rheumatologists were relatively low (35.6–54.6%).
Abbvie has announced top line results of their SELECT-PSA trial of upadacitinib (UPA), wherein both the 15 and 30 mg doses met the primary endpoint of ACR20 response at week 12 and demonstrated radiographic inhibition at week 24.
Dr Jack Cush reviews the news and journal articles from the past week on RheumNow.com
Obesity has been shown to be a risk factor for the onset of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and also shown to affect outcomes by impairing responses to many DMARD therapies. A Swiss study of RA patients undergoing bariatric surgery failed to show that bariatric surgery and weight loss had any effect on the incidence of RA.
A metanalysis of phase II, III and IV trials in moderate to severe plaque psoriasis suggests comparative efficacy biologic treatments, but that that brodalumab, guselkumab, ixekizumab, and risankizumab-rzaa were shown to have the past skin (PASI) response rates.
JAMA Internal Medicine has reported that use of low dose aspirin for venous thromboembolism (VTE) prophylaxis after total hip and knee replacement is equal in efficacy to other anticoagulants.
The suggestion to hit rheumatoid arthritis (RA) early and hard with biologic therapies itself took a hit in a new study.
Use of first-line etanercept (Enbrel) plus methotrexate in very early RA was not associated with a substantially higher rate of remission compared with a strategy of treat-to-target methotrexate monotherapy, a randomized open-label trial found.
The VEDERA study sought to confirm whether the very early introduction of first-line etanercept+methotrexate (ETN+MTX) was superior to treat-to-target MTX (MTX-TT) in patients with early RA.
The European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) has established an international collaborative group (EULAR SS Task Force) to develop the first EULAR evidence and consensus-based recommendations for the management of patients with Sjogens syndrome (SjS).
