Articles By Jack Cush, MD
The Best Kind of Arthritis …..Revisited
A reprise of a prior blog on the "best kinds of arthritis" to have. This time with more commentary and good news.
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Sleep Apnea Increases Risk of Gout
Zhang and colleagues from Boston analyzed patients with physician diagnosed sleep apnea from The Health Improvement Network in the UK and compared these with 5 controls (age, sex, BMI matched). They studied 9,865 patients with sleep apnea and 43,598 controls.
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Initiation of Urate-Lowering Therapy During Gout Attacks
A retrospective analysis examined whether it's better to initiate urate-lowering therapy (ULT) during or after an attack of acute gout.
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Bronchiectasis Contributes to Activity and Seropositivity in Rheumatoid Arthritis
UK investigators have shown that rheumatoid arthritis patients with bronchiectasis (BRRA) have a five-fold increased mortality compared to RA without bronchiectasis. It is unclear if serologic differences, activity measures and biomarkers may be different in this cohort.
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Respiratory and Cardiovascular Mortality Higher in RA Women
Using data from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS), Sparks and colleagues analyzed 119,209 women beginning in 1976. The identified 964 incident RA cases and 28,808 deaths during 36 years of prospective follow-up.
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The Dying Hospital Consult
Hospital consults – “nobody goes there anymore”, and not because it’s too crowded (a quote from the late great Yogi Berra), but rather because it’s a poor investment of time and resources.
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Toxoplasma Infections in the Immunosuppressed
In the USA, toxoplasmosis is the second leading cause of foodborne illness–related death and hospitalization, with >300 deaths and 4000 hospitalizations each year [2]; 4800 people develop visual loss yearly secondary to the parasite.
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Plaquenil Benefits Pregnant Women with Anti-Phospholipid Syndrome
Healio.com reports that pregnant women with APL antibodies and who took Plaquenil (HCQ or hydroxychloroquine) had better pregnancy outcomes than those who did not.
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FDA Holds Off on Xeljanz Approval for Psoriasis
The FDA has denied Pfizer's application seeking an indication for Xeljanz in patients with moderate to severe chronic plaque psoriasis.
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Dietary Supplements Send 23,000 to the ER Annually
The CDC has reported in the NEJM that dietary supplements may be associated with higher than expected rates of adverse events requiring medical evaluation in the emergency department (ED).
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