Every single morning—even on weekends—Robert W. Simms, MD, wakes up at 3:45 and is out the door by 4:30 to swim, run or cycle for at least one hour. After weekday workouts, he then heads to his job at Boston University (BU) School of Medicine, where he serves as professor of medicine and rheumatology section…
CHICAGO—Amid what she called a “dizzying array of choices” for rheumatoid arthritis (RA)—from anti-TNF and anti-IL6-receptor therapies to B cell depletion to new biosimilar options—disease treatment should still revolve around several basic concepts, an expert said at the ACR State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April. Joan Bathon, MD, chief of rheumatology at Columbia University in New…
CHICAGO—The placebo effect in treating pain in osteoarthritis (OA) should not be discounted, an expert said at the ACR State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April. It’s especially important to accept the effect as real considering that trials of pain therapies in OA generate such high placebo effects (typically at least 40%) and that OA treatment options,…
CHICAGO—About 30 years ago, pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and interstitial lung disease (ILD) began to outpace renal crisis as the main causes of death in scleroderma (SSc). But treating these lung complications has proved vexing for clinicians. There is no easy way to predict who will develop PAH. There is no telltale antibody and no…
CHICAGO—When a patient with rheumatic disease suffers recurrent infections, has a history of multiple autoimmune diseases or presents with atypical autoimmune syndromes, clinicians should consider the possibility of an immune deficiency, an expert said at the ACR State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April. W. Winn Chatham, MD, professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at…
BALTIMORE—Rheumatologists may not think about osteoporosis on a daily basis, but they should, said Dr. Karl Insogna, the Ensign Professor of Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine and director of the Yale Bone Center in New Haven, Conn., in his recent lecture at the Maryland Society for the Rheumatic Diseases. With approximately 75 million…
Patients who reviewed an industry-sponsored booklet about a commonly used rheumatoid arthritis drug were twice as likely to choose the proposed therapy as were patients who reviewed similar decision-aid material presented in a neutral manner, according to a recent study. Richard Martin, MD, MA, professor of medicine, rheumatology, at Michigan State University College of Human…
Could relief for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) symptoms be as close as the nearest seafood restaurant? Possibly, say researchers from Harvard. University who recently conducted a cross-sectional study. Published in the March issue of Arthritis Care & Research, the research examined whether consuming fresh fish could ease RA symptoms.1 Previous studies have examined the role fish…
A phase 3 clinical trial in which researchers treated lupus patients with blisibimod, a biologic treatment that inhibits B cell activating factor (BAFF), did not meet its primary endpoint, but did demonstrate evidence of possible efficacy. Researcher Joan T. Merrill, MD, a member of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) and OMRF professor of medicine…
A recent analysis of the monoclonal antibody epratuzumab finds new evidence for its effectiveness in a subset of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients who have a concurrent diagnosis of Sjögren’s syndrome, a progressive autoimmune disease that affects exocrine glands and is characterized by dry eyes and mouth.1 Sjögren’s can be primary, meaning independent of other…