Whether it’s RA, SLE or Sjogren’s, the increased prevalence of females affected by auto-immune diseases is well established, yet not fully understood. Often, I have heard that sexual hormones are responsible for every aspect of it. Two abstracts presented this year question this paradigm.

A lot of interesting studies will be presented at the poster sessions on Sunday, November 12 and some of them address practical real-world issues such as treatment intensification and the impact of pregnancy on axSpA imaging. 

Dr. Jack Cush reviews this past week's news and journal reports from RheumNow.com. Good news is that nearly 99% of adult rheumatology positions matched! But the challenge is that 45% of pediatric fellowship programs and 39% of pediatric rheum slots were unfilled in the 2024 NRMP match.

Psoriatic arthritis and the gut microbiome have become more intertwined, especially in the past few years. It was to my amazement that one of the first abstracts I came across was the effect of probiotic modulation on gut dysbiosis and disease activity in psoriatic arthritis patients. 

While adult rheumatology programs continue to have high match rates, pediatric rheumatology programs remain less popular.The National Residency Matching Program announced yesterday that the 2024 rheumatology fellowship match filled 97.6% (124/127) of programs, and 98.9% (273/276) of rheumatology fellowship positions. This is on par with last years (2023) adult rheumatology match wherein 97.8% (265/271) of the rheumatology fellow positions were