As treatments for psoriatic arthritis (PsA) emerge, a clinical trial comparing the Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor upadacitinib and the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitor adalimumab provided some new insights. Published earlier this year in The New England Journal of Medicine, the SELECT-PsA 1, double-blind, phase 3 trial found that a 30 mg dose of upadacitinib…
About 30% of patients with psoriasis have psoriatic arthritis (PsA), a complex, multi-faceted, chronic, inflammatory musculoskeletal and skin disease for which the treatment has changed considerably over the past few years.1 Biosimilars and other new drugs have become a therapeutic turning point for many patients suffering from rheumatic illnesses, including PsA. The treatment of PsA…
An overview of the research to date and the ways in which such evidence can be used to guide the treatment of patients was presented at the 2019 ACR/ARP Annual Meeting in a session titled Optimizing Outcomes in Psoriatic Arthritis: A Domain-Based Strategy. In the years since this presentation, additional research has helped supply greater…
Initial 24-week data from a study of patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) show that treatment with guselkumab improved symptoms and resulted in a higher ACR20 response than placebo in patients who could not tolerate, or did not respond to, treatment with a tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi).
Increased cardiovascular (CV) risk in patients with rheumatic disease is old news. Over the past decade, a multitude of studies have demonstrated elevated CV risk in a variety of conditions: systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis (PsA), to name a few. The risk in patients with rheumatic disease seems to be linked to…
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Lower doses of cannabidiol (CBD) failed to provide any meaningful reduction in pain when added to other analgesic therapy in patients with hand osteoarthritis (OA) or psoriatic arthritis (PsA) in a randomized, placebo-controlled study from Denmark.1 Writing in the journal, Pain, Jonathan Vela, MD, and colleagues of Aalborg University note that CBD…
Sarcoidosis and IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD) are both immune-mediated, often multi-organ, diseases of uncertain etiology capable of presenting with diverse clinical manifestations. Many clinical features are common to both conditions, including hypergammaglobulinemia, the ability to form inflammatory masses and involvement of the lymph nodes, lacrimal glands, salivary glands, meninges and lungs. Although imaging modalities, such as…
SARS-CoV-2, or COVID-19, is a complex disease entity that continues to evolve. Physicians, researchers and scientists alike have worked tirelessly to tackle this beast in its short existence; however, we are reminded daily that there is more to this virus than meets the eye. It is well known that COVID-19 can cause acute respiratory failure…
Discovered more than 3,000 years ago, colchicine is one of the oldest drugs still in use today. Like most old remedies, colchicine is a chemical substance found in many plants, most notably in colchicum autumnale, known as wild saffron or autumn crocus. It was mentioned in the oldest Egyptian medical text, Ebers Papyrus (circa 1550…
Although rheumatologists prescribe tumor necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi’s) to treat several rheumatic diseases, they recognize immunogenicity influences the efficacy and safety of TNFi’s. Example: The formation of anti-drug antibodies can affect infusion reactions and cause low-serum drug levels and therapeutic failure. The induction phase is a period of high incidence of immunogenicity, and observational data…