Preconception planning is essential to help women with autoimmune disease have optimal pregnancy outcomes. Unplanned pregnancy can also negatively impact disease course in some patients. Yet many rheumatologic patients of childbearing age do not receive adequate contraception or prepregnancy education and counseling. Rheumatologists must work collaboratively with other healthcare providers to make sure rheumatic patients…
My dear electronic health records How do I dislike thee? Let me count the ways Adaptation of Sonnet 43 By Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806–1861 As my tenure as physician editor winds down, it’s worth reviewing some of the more nettlesome issues confronting clinicians that have been previously discussed in these pages and gauge their current…
CHICAGO—“Why do so many drugs fail in clinical trials?” asked Michael Brenner, MD, chief of rheumatology, immunology and allergy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. This question, previously posed by Francis Collins, MD, PhD, director of the National Institutes of Health, prompted a discussion among scientists and stakeholders in the pharmaceutical industry. The conversation…
Shingles, also known as herpes zoster (HZ), is a common and sometimes debilitating disease that disproportionately affects elderly individuals and those who are immunocompromised. Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have a 1.5–2-fold higher risk of developing HZ compared with healthy adults. Treatment with some disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) has been shown to increase this risk….
Patients who receive abaloparatide and switch to alendronate have a statistically significant reduction in fracture risk through 3.5 years, according to a new study…
Researchers from the AMP RA/Lupus Network came together in June at the annual FOCIS meeting to share their progress as they perform a systematic molecular deconstruction of human diseases…
MADRID—Scores on the Health Assessment Questionnaire for Rheumatoid Arthritis (HAQ) and C-reactive protein (CRP) levels were independent predictors of whether patients could be tapered successfully from a TNF inhibitor after having reached remission of their RA, according to findings presented in a session at the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology. Researchers also developed a composite…
MADRID—The anti-IL6 “nanobody,” vobarilizumab, produced mixed results when used with methotrexate (MTX) and compared with MTX and placebo, according to results of a 24-week, double-blind Phase 2b study of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), which were presented in an abstract session at the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology (EULAR). The drug missed its primary endpoint…
A 22-year-old Indian male presented to the emergency department with hemoptysis. A month prior, he had presented to an urgent care center complaining of cough with occasional episodes of blood-tinged sputum in the morning. He was diagnosed with community-acquired pneumonia based on a chest X-ray without laboratory testing and was prescribed levofloxacin. A few days…
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic autoimmune disease associated with erosive destruction of diarthrodial joints. Patients who are seropositive are more prone to developing extra-articular manifestations, such as rheumatoid lung, rheumatoid nodules and others. With the development of disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), the incidence and severity of these extra-articular manifestations has declined. Below, we describe…