Adult-onset Still’s disease (AOSD) is a systemic autoinflammatory disorder characterized by persistent fever at regular intervals, arthralgias or arthritis, rash, sore throat and neutrophilic leukocytosis.1,2 Significant elevation in ferritin levels is characteristic and tends to correlate with disease activity. Additional clinical features may include myalgias, lymphadenopathy, hepatosplenomegaly, serositis, myocarditis, abnormal liver function tests and development…
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—The risk of malignancy in patients with systemic necrotizing vasculitis varies according to the treatment received, according to an analysis of five randomized controlled trials. Previous studies reported an increased risk of malignancy in patients with systemic necrotizing vasculitis, and a more recent study from the European Vasculitis Study Group, based on…
Patients with a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) experience on average double the risk of developing malignant lymphoma when compared with the general population. With the major changes in RA treatment taking place over the past decade, has there been a reduction in the risk of lymphoma in this population? Researchers from the Karolinska Institute…
The patient was a 48-year-old woman who saw her primary care physician for a flu-like illness three months prior to admission. Her symptoms initially improved, but recurred one month later; she was treated symptomatically, and again symptoms resolved. Two months later, she presented to an outside facility’s emergency department with fever to 103ºF, with associated…
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Compared with cyclophosphamide, rituximab treatment poses less malignancy risk in patients with antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis (AAV), European researchers report. Dr. Emma E. van Daalen of Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands tells Reuters Health, “Previous studies reported an increased malignancy risk in patients with AAV, which has been associated…
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—The oral Janus kinase inhibitor tofacitinib (Xeljanz, Pfizer) does not increase the risk of malignancies, according to pooled data from more than 5000 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. In an April 22 online paper in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, Dr. Lisy Wang of Pfizer, Groton, Connecticut, and colleagues noted that in RA…
Links between autoimmunity, malignancy prompt rheumatologists to include cancer screening for patients