"As scholars of disease have noted, RA today appears to be a less severe disease than it was when I started my career in the 1970s. Then, patients routinely ‘went up in smoke’ and rapidly became crippled, wasting away in a state we called ‘burnt out’.
Lancet article on the increasing prevalence of gout shows a rate of 2.5% in the UK that has increased 67% in the last 15 years.
Pooled analyses of the tanezumab (a nerve growth factor inhibitor) phase 3 studies was presented at the 2015 Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI) World Congress.
A Finnish early RA register studied 14,878 incident RA patients from 2000-2008 and identified 1157 deaths. Patients receiving DMARDs and MTX had lower mortality rates. The standardized moratility ratio for the entire cohort was reduced (0.57, 95% CI 0.52 to 0.62).
HLA-B27 is found 6.1% of the US population, but with is seen in >90% patients with ankylosing spondylitis. HLA-B27 increases risk of spondylitis, uveitis and heart block. [Image credit: "HLA-B*2705" by Pdeitiker - Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons]
According to the Federal Trade Commission biosimilars have the potential to save the U.S. healthcare system $250 billion through 2022.
Hepatic enzyme elevations with TNF inhibitor use is not uncommon.
The defining triad of Blau's syndrome includes granulomatous polyarthritis, dermatitis and uveitis. This rare, monogenic, autosomal dominant disorder stems from a "gain in function" mutation of the pattern recognition receptor NOD2.
Nearly 20% Americans have chronic back pain, but 5-6% have inflammatory back pain. These numbers were derived from the 2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey that showed the USA prevalence of axial spondyloarthritis to be 1-1.4% and ankylosing spondylitis to be 0.5%.
Researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston prospectively studied 107 RA patients with regard to oral medication (DMARDs, steroids) adherence. They report that adherence was low, ranging from 58-71% overall.
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