This week on the podcast, Dr. Jack Cush recalls what life was like early on during COVID, from March to June of 2020.  During this time, his close friend, Larry, contracted COVID-19 and was hospitalized, intubated and put on mechanical ventilation for nearly 2 months.

EULAR has published the 2022 update on recommendations for the management of antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis (AAV). AAV recommendations were last published in 2016, and since, research and clinical trials have advanced our understanding of AAV.  A EULAR task force of 20 experts from 16 countries, reviewed the literature and developed four overarching principles and 17 recommendations.

Psoriatic arthritis (PsA) is plagued by obesity, depression and increased comorbidities; now it appears that polypharmacy adds to the burden of managing PsA. A study of 11,984 PsA patients in the German BARMER health insurance database from 2021 compared medicines and comorbidities with sex-matched and age-matched controls without inflammatory arthritis. Polypharmacy was defined as ≥5 concomitant drugs.

A research report in JAMA Dermatology describes the use of the type 1 interferon receptor inhibitor anifrolumab in patients with chronic discoid lupus erythematosus (DLE). 

Researchers have revealed the modulatory effect of the anti-inflammatory metabolite itaconate (ITA) on T helper and T regulatory cells, which may lead to new therapeutic approaches to treating some autoimmune diseases.