ACR Convergence 2020—At two plenary sessions, speakers highlighted key findings, including results on the QTc interval in patients on hydroxychloroquine, and data from a study on denosumab vs. alendronate for glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis. The QTc Interval & Hydroxychloroquine The safety profile and optimal dosing of hydroxychloroquine has been a topic for decades because it is known…
ACR CONVERGENCE 2020—At the ACR’s fully virtual annual meeting on Saturday, Nov. 7, Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, delivered a special lecture on COVID-19, from virology to therapy to vaccine development. Novel Coronavirus, Familiar Vectors When Chinese physicians first reported infections by what…
ACR CONVERGENCE 2020—The ACR’s first fully virtual annual meeting kicked off on Thursday, Nov. 5. During the Opening Session, ACR President Ellen M. Gravallese, MD, talked about how the specialty’s response during the pandemic has provided great hope and will help rheumatology become an even more essential specialty. At the first Plenary Session on Friday,…
A 2019 study demonstrated the benefit of a newer drug class, PCSK9 inhibitors, to help lower cholesterol in patients with statin-associated immune-mediated necrotizing myopathy…
Physical inactivity significantly affects disease burden and reduces the overall quality of life in patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA), according to a study from Losina et al. The researchers calculated the total quality-adjusted life-years lost for U.S. patients with OA due to inactivity.
I should have paid more attention in medical school. If I had, I might have remembered enough about basic pathophysiology to know why everyone was suddenly pulling their patients off of lisinopril. For those of you who need a quick primer: When the pressure in the renal artery drops, the kidney secretes renin. Working together,…
ATLANTA—At the ACR/ARP 2019 Annual Meeting, several widely renowned experts across an array of specialty subjects provided a comprehensive and compelling review of advances in the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of a number of rheumatologic conditions. Sjögren’s Syndrome Frederick Vivino, MD, FACR, chief of rheumatology at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and professor of clinical medicine…
Researchers investigating the effects of air pollutants on a biomarker for rheumatic autoimmune diseases have found a significant correlation between anti-citrullinated protein antibody positivity in the general population and exposure to industrial fine particulate matter…
ATLANTA—Rheumatic diseases have been the subject of a range of public health campaigns and reports over the past decade, but improving their visibility remains a work in progress, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expert said at the 2019 ACR/ARP Annual Meeting. A growing attention to pain and the opioid crisis may help…
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Low-dose methotrexate can be associated with gastrointestinal, pulmonary, infectious, hematologic and other adverse effects, according to an analysis of the Cardiovascular Inflammation Reduction Trial (CIRT). “Methotrexate is not a benign drug, even at dosages used for rheumatic diseases,” Daniel H. Solomon, MD, MPH of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, tells Reuters Health…