Anniversary Feature: Top 5 Most-Read Articles from 1st Year Save

It is important to know where you’ve been, as it will most certainly color where you are going. Hence, in honor of our 1st year anniversary, we have taken note of our most popular articles.

We’ve identified the top 5 most-read articles and features from the last year. Our metrics were simple: we looked at “page views” within the window of April 2015 to April 2016. In this timeframe, we had over 200,000 page views and nearly 50,000 visitors to the website in the last year.

While we love seeing such high numbers of website visitors to read our content, we are equally pleased with the thousands who receive our daily emails; our goal is to deliver news and interesting content to your inbox, content you can scan in 16 seconds to stay abreast of what’s shakin’ in rheumatology. If something catches your eye, you can read it or save it to your RheumNow “folder” for future reading.

The following are your favorite 5 articles from the past year. I’ve added my perspective on why these caught your eye and interest. The interesting thing about these 5 is I penned 3 of them in response to something that happened in clinic, and the other 2 were features from 2 notable rheumatologists writing on the subject of hydroxychloroquine. 

1. 10 Ways Rheumatoid Arthritis Could’ve Killed Glen Frey.  I wrote this the day Glenn Frey died. In case you didn’t know, Glenn Frey was a founding member of the iconic American rock band The Eagles.  Frey and his band mate Don Henley were responsible for most of the writing, singing and gold albums. Henley said Glen was the spark plug, the man with a plan and the one who drove the Eagles to success. I wrote the article because I was mad - mad he died and mad he died from something we all believe we can aptly treat. I wrote it to remind the lay public and the rheumatology community that “RA is never given the credit it deserves as the potentially devastating disease it can be”.  Treating RA is serious and like going to war. That’s my approach. 
2. 5 Things to Now about Anti-Malarials for Lupus.  Dr. Donald Thomas wrote this neat, clear read on how to best manage lupus patients with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).  He noted we shouldn’t routinely put all patients on 400 mg daily and that weight-based dosing is important to avoid retinopathy. Just as Dr. Bergman’s article had written a few months prior, Dr. Thomas makes a strong case for the benefits of chronic HCQ therapy in SLE.
3. The Role of Hydroxychloroquine Blood Levels in SLE.  Dr. Petri and her coworkers summarized their research on this issue, largely concluding that while not great for disease activity correlations, monitoring of blood levels can be an appropriate measure of HCQ compliance. This was highly popular for several reasons – the authorities on lupus and HCQ who wrote the article, the importance and impact of HCQ in practice and the article was syndicated on other news outlets, thanks to our publishing partner MedPage Today, where it was seen by thousands of clinicians and lay folk. These two important articles on an age-old drug speaks loudly that rheumatologists want and need to be expert, especially with their most frequently employed therapies.
4. It Took Me 30 years to Learn This About Rheumatoid Arthritis.  This article was written to cover a lot of ground not usually covered by most chapters or articles on RA therapeutics and care.  The benefit of time, wherein you become better at your craft, is a great advantage to offer your patients. Within the time benefit is a lot of reading, knowledge, meetings, learning from peers and most of all, listening to patients.  It was Osler who said, “listen to the patient, he is telling you the diagnosis”. Thanks to Joel Kremer and others who offered that up as one of their favorite quotes in medicine. The patient will also teach you (in time) what works, what doesn’t, what you forgot to address and above all how to listen and learn.
5. Managing Methotrexate Toxicity.  A day doesn’t go by that I’m either dealing with a MTX-related minor complaint or misinformation about MTX or teaching peers how to avoid the “blahs” with weekly dextromethorphan or “oral ulcers” with daily vitamin A (OTC).  Couple this with a quasi-evidence and experience based approach to MTX and alcohol use, many rheumatologists and patients found this to be a highly instructive, quick read of the pearls needed when using MTX (no matter the disorder).