A 51-year-old Caucasian female was referred by a local rheumatologist to the Center of Autoinflammatory Diseases at Stony Brook University, N.Y., for an unusual disease presentation. The patient had had recurrent polyarthritis, fever and rash for the previous three years. She described having a migratory polyarthritis affecting the shoulders, knees, ankles and bilateral forefoot, with…
BOSTON (Reuters)—New Jersey on Thursday accused Insys Therapeutics Inc of engaging in a fraudulent scheme to boost sales of a fentanyl-based cancer pain drug, as Massachusetts announced a $500,000 settlement with the drugmaker to resolve similar allegations. The lawsuit by New Jersey Attorney General Christopher Porrino accused Insys of illegally directing its sales force to…
Nationally, opioid use and addiction are drawing increased scrutiny. An increase in the number of overdoses and addiction to heroin and prescription pain relievers in the past decade has been attributed in part to increased prescribing of opioids for the treatment of pain by physicians. National trends suggest the rate of opioid prescribing plateaued in…
CHICAGO—Delia Chiaramonte, MD, associate director of education at the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, presented the newest thinking on pain to a gathering of rheumatologists at the ACR’s State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April. She began by explaining that pain is more than nociception. Nociception stimulates nerves to…
“I was hoping for good news, but now I am worried,” was the response of a 29-year-old patient when I suggested an oncology referral. He was four months into treatment of dermatomyositis and had experienced significant improvement of his muscle strength, CPK levels and interstitial pneumonitis, but a follow-up CT scan showed that his spleen…
The importance of rheumatologists and physical therapists (PTs) working together for patients cannot be understated. Carol Oatis, PT, PhD, says, “Rheumatologists and PTs have very similar goals. … Collaboration is essential for optimal outcomes.”…
While members of Congress debate healthcare legislation, rheumatologists say many of their patients struggle to afford everything from generic drugs to insurance copayments for physical therapy. “It’s a mess. The cost of prescriptions and the rationale for those rising costs in the U.S. right now—it’s just a mess,” says James R. O’Dell, MD, Stokes-Shackleford Professor of…
Current ARHP President Afton L. Hassett, PsyD—a clinical psychologist and an associate research scientist in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Michigan—attended her first ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in 1999. Dr. Hassett submitted an abstract to the meeting describing her dissertation research exploring the role of pain and depression in rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. It…
On many Saturday evenings, Kaleb Michaud, PhD, saves the world from pandemics, harvests barrels of coffee beans to sell at market or helps King Brandur recover the fabled Runic DragonStones. Dr. Michaud, an associate professor in the division of rheumatology and immunology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha and also co-director of…
Case A 46-year-old Caucasian female presented to the outpatient rheumatology clinic where she had been followed for several years. Her chief complaint was pain in her right knee, posterior right thigh and right hip that had begun gradually over the previous three weeks. Her past medical history was significant for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), obesity and…