New Findings on COVID-19 Vaccination, Race & More Shared in 1st Plenary Session

Patients in the risankizumab group had significantly higher rates of ACR20, 50 and 70 responses at 24 weeks after the start of treatment (P<0.001) than patients in the placebo group. They also had higher scores on the Psoriasis Area Severity Index (PASI) 90 (P<0.001) and better performance on the Health Assessment Questionnaire-Disability Index (HAQ-DI; P<0.001) than patients in the placebo group.

Those in the treatment group also had significantly higher rates of minimal disease activity at 24 weeks, Dr. Ostor said.

Disparity by Race & Neighborhood

Dr. Ram Singh

From 1999 to 2019, 8,899 deaths in the U.S. were attributed to lupus nephritis, with death rates due to the condition declining by 27% during this time.³ But from 2014 to 2019, the death rates began to rise, said Ram Singh, MD, professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The findings came from an analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s WONDER database on public health.

Researchers also found that, compared with white people, death rates from lupus nephritis were 6.1 times higher over that period for Black people, about 2.2 times higher for Hispanics, about 2.0 times higher for Asians and about 2.7 times higher for Native Americans.

Looking at urbanization, researchers found the highest death rates from lupus nephritis were in large, central metro areas—essentially inner cities—while living in large, fringe metropolitan area—essentially suburbs—was associated with the lowest death rates.

They also found race had a different effect on the risk of death from lupus nephritis in different urbanization areas. Example: Hispanics had a much higher mortality rate in large central metro areas than they did in all other urbanization zones, while Black race had relatively little effect on lupus nephritis mortality risk across urbanization zones.

Both race and residence are independently associated with lupus nephritis mortality, according to Dr. Singh. “Urbanization is an effective modifier of race/ethnicity’s effect on lupus nephritis mortality, suggesting neighborhood environmental factors [into] health outcomes,” he said.

Abatacept & RA Prevention

Dr. Juergen Rech

Abatacept improved subclinical inflammation in patients at risk of developing RA, with longer-term results awaited, according to findings presented by Juergen Rech, MD, a rheumatologist and researcher at the University Clinic Erlangen, Germany.⁴

The therapy targets the window of opportunity when patients experience arthralgias and have signs of subclinical inflammation, but don’t yet have any current or previous signs of swelling, don’t have a diagnosis of clinical arthritis and haven’t received glucocorticoids or treatment with disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs).