After years of speculation about potential cost savings and debates on safety, biosimilars are about to step onto the stage of rheumatic disease treatment. On Feb. 9, the Arthritis Advisory Committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) met in Washington, D.C., and recommended the approval of CT-P13, a proposed biosimilar to infliximab (Remicade),…
San Francisco, Nov. 6–11, 2015 The 2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in San Francisco was the most well attended in the College’s history. With the poster hall, exhibit hall, concurrent scheduling of multiple tracks and hundreds of scientific sessions presented during the event, the odds are good that even attendees missed a lot of what they…
SAN FRANCISCO—T follicular helper (Tfh) cells are emerging as an important subset of cells now recognized as important to facilitating an adaptive immune response. Developed during dendritic cell priming in vivo, these cells represent one subgroup among many of effector cells that result after naive CD4+T cells differentiate. Other well-known subgroups include Th1 cells, Th2…
SAN FRANCISCO—Evolving research into the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is increasingly showing that rather than a single causative dysfunctional pathway leading to disease, multiple pathways are involved, the study of which can shed additional light on what is occurring in a person’s body prior to developing symptoms of disease. Saying it another way, no…
Over the past several years, the ACR has ramped up its efforts in advocacy. Under the leadership of the Government Affairs Committee, many ACR staff, members and their patients, considerable progress has been made moving priority issues forward in 2015. A few highlights from 2015 include: The Patients’ Access to Treatment Act (PATA) was introduced…
SAN FRANCISCO—By harnessing the power of next generation sequencing strategies and combining them with clever statistical strategies and tools, investigators are striving to define causal pathways of and mechanisms underlying complex diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, according to Soumya Raychaudhuri, MD, PhD, associate professor, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, during a session…
SAN FRANCISCO—Research is revealing more clues about the environmental factors that likely play a role in triggering rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in patients who are susceptible—or that may even protect them from autoimmunity. Large-scale, lengthy population studies conducted at institutions worldwide provide in-depth data from which to identify potential triggers and protective factors for RA, from…
SAN FRANCISCO—The risk of stroke after herpes zoster (HZ) infection is elevated in the period immediately after infection in patients with autoimmune diseases, according to a study presented at the 2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting.1 The findings were presented in a scientific session, called Discover 2015, that highlighted new research. In another study from the session,…
SAN FRANCISCO—Men and women have different mechanisms that are at work in producing pain in rheumatic diseases—a little-studied and little-appreciated fact that is crucial to developing and using the right kinds of treatments, an expert in rheumatic disease pain said in a talk at the 2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting. The lack of acknowledgment of this…
SAN FRANCISCO—Treatment for transthyretin-related amyloidosis (ATTR) is generating more interest from academic researchers and the pharmaceutical industry, with encouraging early results using a multi-pronged therapeutic approach, a researcher said at a review course held before the 2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting. Amyloidoses are a rare and potentially deadly family of diseases in which misfolded protein builds…