Articles By Jack Cush, MD
Bimekizumab Effective in Active Psoriatic Arthritis
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.
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DMARD Inertia by Registry Rheumatologists
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%).
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Upadacitinib Effective in Phase 3 Psoriatic Arthritis Study
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.
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RheumNow Podcast- Best Biologics (2.7.20)
Dr Jack Cush reviews the news and journal articles from the past week on RheumNow.com
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Bariatric Weight Loss Fails to Alter RA Risk
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.
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Which Biologics are Best in Psoriasis
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.
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Aspirin after Hip or Knee Arthoplasty
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.
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Limited Advantage to Very Early vs. Delayed Etanercept in RA
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.
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EULAR Recommendations on Sjögren’s Syndrome
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).
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Half of Opioids Rx Come from 1% of MDs
The BMJ reports that while most US providers are cautious in their prescribing, half of opioid prescriptions are written by 1% of providers. Between 2003 and 2017, there was an annual average of 669495 providers prescribing 8.9 million opioid prescriptions.
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