MADRID—Calcification in osteoarthritis (OA) involves a series of pathways and interactions that feed off each other in a process that bears some resemblance to the transformation of cartilage to bone that takes place in the embryonic stage of human development, a researcher said here at the 2017 Annual European Congress on Rheumatology (EULAR). “My hypothesis…
MADRID—Determining what is a best practice in rheumatology and then implementing improvements based on what you find can be fraught with complexity, an expert said during the 2017 Annual European Congress on Rheumatology (EULAR). Examples are emerging of benchmarking projects in which electronic registers are used to improve patient care, said William Dixon, MD, chair…
Patients with a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) experience on average double the risk of developing malignant lymphoma when compared with the general population. With the major changes in RA treatment taking place over the past decade, has there been a reduction in the risk of lymphoma in this population? Researchers from the Karolinska Institute…
A two-year study among patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA) showed that steroid injections for knee pain were no more effective than saline injections and actually reduced cartilage volume more than placebo. The study, conducted at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, looked at progression of cartilage loss and change in knee pain after treatment with placebo…
A recent study, conducted by the Vasculitis Clinical Research Consortium and funded by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), examined whether the addition of abatacept, a drug that affects T cell activation, to standard prednisone treatment could reduce the risk of relapse in patients with giant cell arteritis (GCA).1 Although…
In the next five to 10 years, the frequency of revision total knee arthroplasty is expected to grow 600%, due to the rise in obesity in the U.S. population and increase in primary knee replacement surgeries. Physicians can use different tools to help decrease the risk of premature implant failure and improve patient outcome…
In a new study, patients taking denosumab had greater treatment adherence over two years than patients on alendronate and other anti-osteoporosis agents…
Treatment with oral methylprednisolone may be associated with an increased risk of serious adverse events, specifically infection, in patients with IgA nephropathy. Despite the five-times higher risk, study results also showed a three-times lower risk of kidney failure for the treatment group…
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Oropharyngeal carriage of Kingella kingae is strongly associated with osteoarticular infection in young children, a case-control study done from Canada and Switzerland shows. “Most of the kids who have osteoarticular infection with Kingella kingae will also have it in their throat, so if we do a throat swab, we can identify it…
A new study in mice found that Hyal2 deficiency may play a role in the turnover of cartilage hyaluronan, resulting in an accumulation of hyaluronan and, eventually, the development of osteoarthritis. Researchers suspect these results indicate an imbalance in the metabolism of hyaluronan…