Articles By Aurelie Najm, MD, PhD
RA: update for women of child bearing potential (and men!)
Fertility in the context of RMDs is a daily concern for a lot of rheumatologists and patients. EULAR this year proposed new fertility data, especially in Rheumatoid Arthritis, along with an update of the EULAR points to consider for use of antirheumatic drugs in reproduction, pregnancy and lactation.
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Dual seropositivity and shared epitopes in RA: friends or foes?
Dual seropositivity (rheumatoid factor and/or anti-citrullinated protein antibodies) as well as shared epitope are known to be associated with poor prognosis and structural damage in RA.
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EULAR 2024: New drugs for RA?
Several abstracts are presenting new compounds, targeting either RA well-known inflammatory pathways or offering new mechanisms of action or therapeutic sequences; these are summarized below.
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ICYMI: Methotrexate: shall we split up?
Methotrexate is widely used in rheumatic diseases yet poses common tolerance issues, especially for the oral form; and bioavailability is known to be limited for doses over 15mg. In the SMART study, Prasad et al. present the first RCT comparing either single dose (25 mg) or split-dose (10 mg morning, 15 mg evening, same day) once weekly MTX for 24 weeks.
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ICYMI: Sex bias in RA: time to stop blaming hormones?
Whether it’s RA, SLE or Sjogren’s, the increased prevalence of females affected by auto-immune diseases is well established, yet not fully understood. Often, I have heard that sexual hormones are responsible for every aspect of it. Two abstracts presented this year question this paradigm.
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Withdraw DMARDS after remission?
The possibility of withdrawing DMARDs after patients achieve remission has been in our minds for a while. Yet when our patients ask whether it is a good idea to taper or stop their DMARD when they are doing well, most of us don’t have a black or white answer for them.
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Methotrexate: shall we split up?
Methotrexate is widely used in rheumatic diseases yet poses common tolerance issues, especially for the oral form; and bioavailability is known to be limited for doses over 15mg. In the SMART study, Prasad et al. present the first RCT comparing either single dose (25 mg) or split-dose (10 mg morning, 15 mg evening, same day) once weekly MTX for 24 weeks.
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Sex bias in RA: time to stop blaming hormones?
Whether it’s RA, SLE or Sjogren’s, the increased prevalence of females affected by auto-immune diseases is well established, yet not fully understood. Often, I have heard that sexual hormones are responsible for every aspect of it. Two abstracts presented this year question this paradigm.
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Are T cells the missing link in pre-clinical RA?
T cells are known to play a key role in RA pathogenesis and the diversity of the T cell repertoire is known to be reduced in RA.
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RA and cancer risk in the biologic era
A nationwide population-based study, by Beydon et al. (OP0044), has performed a more recent (2010-2020) analysis of cancer incidence in people living with RA within the French national claim database, compared to general population, measured in the French Network of Population-Based Cancer Registries.
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