Articles By Jack Cush, MD
High Volume Lyme Disease Reporting in Low Incidence Arkansas
Even though Arkansas lies on the edge of the geographic range of the principal Lyme disease tick vector, Ixodes scapularis, the risk for Lyme infection is low, and no confirmed Lyme disease cases were reported in Arkansas during 2008–2014 (1)
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New EULAR/ACR Classification Criteria for Adult and Juvenile Myositis
The European League Against Rheumatism and the American College of Rheumatology (EULAR/ACR) have developed classification criteria for idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) based on data from 976 IIM patients (74% adults; 26% children) and 624 non-IIM patients with mimicking conditions (82% ad
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Death Rates from Lupus Remain Disproportionately High
The Annals of Internal Medicine reports that despite improving trends in mortality, death rates from systematic lupus erythematosus (lupus) remain high compared to those in the general population, and disparities persist between subpopulations and geographic regions. Underreporting of lupus on death certificates may have resulted in underestimates of mortality rates.
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Necroptosis Drives Netosis and ANCA-Associated Vasculitis
PNAS reports that ANCA induced neutrophil activation, generation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETS), and vasculitis are regulated by necroptosis. Using inhibitors of necroptosis-inducing kinases they were able to prevent ANCA associated vasculitis (AAV) in animal models.
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CRIB Study Shows No Transplacental Transfer of Certolizumab
Mariette and colleagues have reported on the prospective pharmacokinetic study of placental transfer of certolizumab pegol (CZP) from pregnant women to their infants at the time of birith.
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CDC Endorses New Shingles Vaccine Over Zostavax
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced on 25 October they endorsed the use of the new GSK shingles vaccine (Shingrix) over the currently available live-virus vaccine (Zostavax) from Merck.
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The RheumNow Week in Review - 27 October 2017
The RheumNow Week in Review discusses the past week's news, journal articles and highlights from RheumNow.com. In this week's report, Dr.
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The Greatest Rheumatologist - Part II
Wow! I hope you read part I of yesterday's “Greatest Rheumatologist” article. So many big names and yet, other names and stories that were equally inspirational. If you read the comments of the part I article you can clearly see several themes emerge.
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RABBIT Risk Scores are Higher in ICU-Admitted RA Patients
The German Rheumatoid Arthritis Biologics Registry (RABBIT) has developed an infectious risk calculator that can project a patient's risk of serious infection in the next 6 months based on several key factors - age, Prior DMARDs, prednisone dose, comorbidities and the biologic intended for use.&n
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Does Birth Control or Breastfeeding Reduce RA Risk?
Researchers have reported their case-control study using the Swedish Epidemiological Investigation of RA study (2641 cases/4251 controls) to examine the influence of oral contraceptive (OC) use or breastfeeding on the risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
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