Gout affects nearly 4% of American adults, causing joint inflammation, pain and crystal deposits that may lead to bone erosion over time. At least five different classification criteria for gout are used worldwide, creating potential discrepancies in clinical trial enrollment and eventual results. An international panel of investigators collaborated to create new, standardized gout classification…
I am a few weeks post-retirement. Having written thank you notes and completed urgent home projects, I swing in a hammock at our currently fire-threatened cabin north of Winthrop, Wash., and reflect. I feel like a young boy while freely flipping pages of a hand-scribed picture book, The Principles of Uncertainty, by Maira Kalman. She…
Screening gout patients for the HLA-B*58:01 allele may help rheumatologists determine more effective treatments and a patient’s risk of allopurinol-induced severe cutaneous adverse reactions…
(Reuters)—The U.S. Food and Drug Administration staff reviewers have raised concerns about kidney- and heart-related side effects noted in trials on AstraZeneca Plc’s gout treatment, especially at higher doses. FDA reviewers, in a preliminary review published on Wednesday, expressed concerns over higher death rates related to the side effects in patients who took the drug,…
For the past 16 years, the website, creakyjoints.org, founded by arthritis patient Seth Ginsberg and social entrepreneur Louis Tharp, has offered arthritis patients and their families a safe online community where they can receive meaningful support and education. In March, the online portal added a new initiative—Arthritis Power, the first-ever patient-led, patient-generated, app-based research registry…
The field of rheumatology took center stage when a handful of speakers discussed trends and research during a disease-oriented session of the 2015 Federation of Clinical Immunity Societies (FOCIS 2015) conference held in San Diego in June. Neutrophils in SLE Mariana Kaplan, MD, chief of Systemic Autoimmunity Branch at the National Institute of Arthritis and…
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Tabalumab, a monoclonal antibody to B-cell activating factor, was modestly better than placebo in relieving symptoms of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), according to results from the ILLUMINATE-2 trial. “Lupus is a complicated disease that does not behave the same way in all patients who share the clinical symptoms,” Dr. Joan T. Merrill…
Summer is a season for travel, so if your immunocompromised patients plan to journey to regions where there are outbreaks of infections, such as chikungunya, tuberculosis, typhoid, yellow fever or other diseases, communication and preparation may prevent serious health events. “The world teems with disease-causing organisms, and almost every infection is more serious in the…
One parent wishes that she could have consulted a crystal ball at the beginning of her daughter’s illness to have “some kind of idea of what we were in for. There are so many stages of letting go of the idea of what your little kid is in for in life, what they are going…
GENEVA (Reuters)—Governments are not doing all they should to tackle the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, a committee of health experts at the World Health Organization said on Thursday. The WHO’s emergency committee, which meets regularly to consider the international response to the disease, said in a statement that its advice had not been completely…