Involving pharmacists in the management of chronic diseases benefits patients, says Wendy Ramey, BSPharm, RPh, CSP, a clinical pharmacy specialist in rheumatology at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. She knows this personally. As someone with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), Ms. Ramey knows pharmacists can play an important role in patient education and encouraging adherence to medications….
Farokh Jamalyaria, MD, a rheumatologist in Houston, never set out to become a birder. He remembers his first foray into birding as being completely unintentional. At 8 years old, while living in Ruston, La., he showed his mother an image of an ivory-billed woodpecker—an extinct species last spotted in the 1940s about 100 miles from…
Paul Sufka Named Social Media Editor for New ACR Twitter Account A clinical rheumatologist with HealthPartners in St. Paul, Minn., Paul Sufka, MD, is conversant with social media: he’s been on Twitter for almost 10 years; has hosted an online rheumatology podcast; and blogs about physician self-care and using Twitter as a tool at medical…
Psoriatic arthritis came to be viewed as a distinct disease entity with specific clinical features, genetics and pathophysiology only gradually. One important historic development in this transition was a 1973 paper written by a pair of researchers out of Leeds, England: John M. Moll, BSc, DM, and Verna Wright, MD, FRCP.1 Here we discuss the…
Eosinophilic fasciitis generally presents with the acute onset of edema followed by progressive skin induration in the setting of hypergammaglobulinemia, an elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and peripheral eosinophilia in 63–93% of patients.1,2 Skin involvement is typically limited to 20.1% of total body surface area and most commonly involves the extremities symmetrically.1,3 The condition was…
Over the past few years, biosimilars and other new drugs have been introduced to treat rheumatic illnesses. Some of the conditions we treat have numerous drug option; others have few or only off-label options. This series, “Rheumatology Drugs at a Glance,” provides streamlined information on the administration of biologic, biosimilar and other medications used to…
A group led by Sarah Ringold, MD, MS, assistant professor of rheumatology at Seattle Children’s Hospital, has developed a new guideline intended to provide recommendations for the treatment and monitoring of children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) manifesting as non-systemic polyarthritis, sacroiliitis or enthesitis.1,2 Key Updates The new recommendations appear in both Arthritis & Rheumatology…
In a second response letter, the FDA has cited the onset and duration of intravenous meloxicam, a non-opioid pain treatment, as concerns that it fails to meet prescriber expectations…
Antibody-secreting cells are important for the pathophysiology of SLE and RA, but researchers have been unable to determine how these cells are activated. A new technique is able to distinguish between naïve autoreactive B cells and established antibody secreting cells…
Using vibrational spectroscopy, investigators have discovered a characteristic signature in the blood of fibromyalgia patients that is distinct from other clinical conditions, including RA, OA and SLE…