Articles By Aurelie Najm, MD, PhD
ICYMI: Sex bias in RA: time to stop blaming hormones?
01 December 2023
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?
27 November 2023
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?
13 November 2023
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?
13 November 2023
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?
03 June 2023
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
02 June 2023
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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ILD in RA and PsA
31 May 2023
Interstitial lung disease (ILD) is a severe extra articular manifestation of RA, with limited treatment strategies and poor prognosis.
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RA: MACE Events with Opioids vs. NSAIDs
22 November 2022
Addressing chronic pain often leads general practitioners and specialists to prescribe opioids. However, opioids (weak and strong) have not demonstrated efficacy in long-term pain management; their chronic use could even worsen pain in users. Opioids prescription is often perceived as being safer than NSAIDs prescription, especially in respect to MACE.
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Infections in pre-RA: a cause or a consequence?
12 November 2022
Rheumatoid arthritis is known to be associated with a higher risk of infections. In abstract 0535, Porter and colleagues have assessed infection rates in the pre-RA and early RA phases as defined by antibiotics prescription and hospital admissions with an infection main diagnostic code in the UK National database.
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Survival and Mortality in RA: time to move away from “one-size fits all”?
12 November 2022
Patients with RA are known to have a higher mortality risk than the general population.
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