The State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook was founded in 1957, and is currently known as Stony Brook University. In the 1970s, when the Health Sciences Center was still in the cocoon stages of its metamorphosis, the School of Medicine, under the brilliant stewardship of Marvin Kuschner, MD, was already on a mission…
Which came first? The infectious microorganism or a host’s immune resistance against it? Through the millennia, a raging battle has pitted the hordes of infectious agents surrounding us against, arguably, the most complex biologic structure ever created, the finely tuned human immune system. The stakes are high for both sides. For the infectious agent, an…
Otulipenia is a recently discovered autoinflammatory disease caused by germline mutations, which results in dysregulated ubiquitination in patients. In a small-scale study, researchers used exome sequencing and candidate gene screening to identify three different loss-of-function mutations in the OTULIN/FAM105B gene in patients…
Abaloparatide for Osteoporosis Abaloparatide is completing Phase III clinical trials for the potential treatment of postmenopausal osteoporosis in women who are at an increased risk of fracture.1 Abaloparatide is a synthetic peptide that engages the parathyroid hormone receptor and has favorable bone building activity. Abaloparatide has completed Phase 3 development for use as a daily…
From its beginnings as the Rheumatic Diseases Study Group (RDSG) in the early 1930s, NYU Langone Medical Center’s Division of Rheumatology has been built on a tradition of research and clinical care. Today’s division, with 24 full-time and 76 part-time faculty members, continues to push toward understanding the pathogenesis of rheumatic diseases and interventions to…
A 55-year-old female patient returns to the office with complaints of gout pain. She is complaining of swelling and a burning pain in her left toe. She has been taking an over-the-counter NSAID to treat the pain, but this has done little to alleviate it. This is her second flare this year. The patient denies…
(Reuters)—Johnson & Johnson says on Monday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the company’s psoriasis drug, ustekinumab (Stelara), for use in adults with Crohn’s disease. The drug is approved in the U.S. to treat plaque psoriasis and a type of arthritis associated with psoriasis. Crohn’s is a chronic inflammatory condition in the gastrointestinal…
Rheumatologists are already familiar with one mosquito-borne virus, chikungunya, whose presentation mimics arthritis. Now, with its recent spread to Puerto Rico and the Southeastern U.S., Zika, another mosquito-borne virus, has become an international public health concern. Sexual transmission of the virus was recently confirmed, expanding the virus’s threat…
When I started my rheumatology practice 40 years ago, it quickly became apparent that many referrals of presumed polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) patients and presumed giant cell arteritis (GCA) patients were the recipients of devastating side effects from long-term corticosteroid (CS) use that could not be discontinued due to prompt recurrence of inflammatory phenomena. It was…
Be careful when prescribing allopurinol to black and Asian gout patients, a study newly advises. Black and Asian patients who take this ubiquitous, more-than-40-year-old medication are at much higher risk of certain serious skin reactions than are Caucasians or Hispanics. Compared with Caucasians, blacks who take allopurinol to lower blood urate levels have an increased…