With the support of its membership, the ACR publishes clinical practice guidelines in multiple disease areas based on the best available clinical and scientific data. These aim to support health professionals treating rheumatology patients to give the best possible care. Like any set of medical guidelines, ACR guidelines are based on evidence of several different…
SAN DIEGO—Top researchers gathered for a review course at the start of the 2017 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in November to describe new research, their own treatment strategies and new ways of thinking about an array of rheumatic diseases. Here are the highlights: Raynaud’s & Other Digit Problems When a patient walks into your clinic with…
Innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) in the joints of patients may drive the pathology of spondyloarthritis through the production of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF). A recent study found that both GM-CSF-producing CD4 T cells and the GM-CSF+ Th17 cells expressed high levels of GPR65—indicating that both GM-CSF and GPR65 may be therapeutic targets for spondyloarthritis…
In the EU, certolizumab pegol has been approved for use in pregnant and nursing women with chronic rheumatic disease…
What factors drive inflammation and progressive disease in ankylosing spondylitis (AS)? The answers have long eluded rheumatologists. Although 90% of patients with AS test positive for the HLA-B27 gene, pieces remain missing in our understanding of this chronic, inflammatory disease, which often leads to pain, spinal fusion and, in about half of patients, gut involvement,…
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Ankylosing spondylitis (AS), axial spondyloarthritis (SpA) and inflammatory back pain are common in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients two decades after IBD diagnosis, according to findings from the IBSEN study1. Doctors should know IBD patients are at risk of inflammatory back problems, and refer them to a rheumatologist when appropriate, Dr. Alvilde Ossum…
Two biosimilar treatments, Rixathon and Imraldi, are moving closer to market release in Europe for the treatment of rheumatic and other diseases…
In a small-scale study, researchers found that no, or minimal amounts of, certolizumab pegol transfers from mothers taking the drug to nursing infants…
LONDON—Results from the extension phase of a Phase 3 trial for the IL-17A inhibitor ixekizumab in psoriatic arthritis (PsA) show that patients started on placebo, adalimumab and ixekizumab continued to show improvements in arthritis, dactylitis and ethesitis, said Philip Mease, MD, a rheumatologist at Swedish Medical Center University of Washington in Seattle.1 Dr. Mease presented the…
A study that found distinct sexual dimorphism in the immunologic profiles of patients with ankylosing spondylosis (AS) suggests that sex is an important variable to address in future research and may eventually lead to more effective sex-specific therapy for patients with the disease. The research, published in the March 2016 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatology,…