Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are increasingly used to treat a variety of malignancies, leading to better cancer treatment outcomes and patient survival. However, the emergence of autoimmunity has been a major adverse event resulting from ICI use. Below, we describe a patient who experienced a flare of preexisting psoriasis and new-onset severe psoriatic arthritis after…
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a leading cause of death among young women, according to an August 2018 study in Arthritis & Rheumatology.1 To help determine where SLE ranks among causes of death, Eric Y. Yen, MD, and Ram Raj Singh, MD, conducted a population-based study using nationwide mortality counts for all female residents of…
The disease called systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) went through many different stages of classification before reaching the modern criteria reflecting our current understanding of its pathogenesis. In 1872, the Viennese dermatologist Moriz Kaposi, MD, published a paper, “New Contributions to Knowledge of Lupus Erythematosus,” which provided a significant leap forward in the characterization of this…
I glanced up from Amanda Wolf’s chart as the emergency department nurse, followed by the lab technician (tech), followed by the electrocardiogram (ECG) tech flowed into cubicle No. 5. John Benner, MD, pulled up a chair to review the case with me at the nursing station. “Here’s what we’ve got. Thirteen-year-old girl with a one-week…
(Reuters Health)—Online socializing may weaken the tie between pain and depression for older people, a U.S. study suggests. People in chronic pain are at risk of depression to start with. When pain makes them stay home more, interacting with friends and family less, it only adds to this risk, the researchers write in the Journals…
STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters)—Two Americans and a Briton won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday for harnessing the power of evolution to generate novel proteins used in everything from environmentally friendly detergents and biofuels to cancer drugs. The fruits of this work include the world’s top-selling prescription medicine – the antibody injection Humira sold by…
Do you remember the 1959 movie, The Mouse That Roared? Through a few small actions, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, a small, often overlooked principality, becomes a superpower on the world map overnight. In many ways, rheumatology has been in the same position. We are a small specialty; we don’t have well-known diseases. Although our…
AMSTERDAM—Low-grade inflammation in older adults can impede immune responsiveness, and researchers have shed light on how this happens. They have developed a short-term treatment that blocks inflammation and boosts the immune response, an expert said at EULAR: the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology. The findings were presented in a session on cellular senescence related to…
Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are at the forefront of advances in cancer therapy and have shown promising results for progression-free survival. Checkpoint signaling pathways, such as cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA-4) and programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1), normally regulate the immune response to promote self-tolerance and prevent tissue damage and inflammation. PD-1 is a…
Imagine telling a patient “You’re in remission!” and finding out it’s not true. The last thing you want to do is get it wrong clinically and put your patient on an emotional rollercoaster. With large vessel vasculitis (LVV) in particular, physicians struggle to be accurate, to determine if indeed the disease has gone away or…