In addition to her full research, clinical and administrative calendar, Dr. Gravallese is now an associate editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, a post she is enjoying because of the exposure to cutting-edge work being done in clinical medicine. She keeps clinical duties in the mix, she says, “because I’ve always felt that was a major influence in all of my work.”
As discoveries about osteoclastogenesis and other pathways of inflammatory joint damage have led to new targets for intervention, Dr. Gravallese has been a major contributor to the paradigm shift in the treatment of rheumatic diseases. She reflects on the immense changes in the field, recalling that when she was a fellow, RA patients in clinic waiting rooms were often wheelchair bound. “When I show pictures of those patients to our fellows now, they are shocked,” she says. “We can pretty much avoid the crippling effects of RA now due to the research that’s been done by many investigators in the field over the past 15 years. It’s been very rewarding to be a part of the journey.”
Gretchen Henkel is a health and medical journalist based in California.
References
- Gravallese EM, Corson JM, Coblyn JS, et al. Rheumatoid aortitis: A rarely recognized but clinically significant entity. Medicine (Baltimore). 1989 Mar;68(2):95–106.
- Gravallese EM, Harada Y, Wang JT, et al. Identification of cell types responsible for bone resorption in rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Am J Pathol. 1998 Apr;152(4):943–951.
- Pettit AR, Ji H, von Stechow D, et al. TRANCE/RANKL knockout mice are protected from bone erosion in a serum transfer model of arthritis. Am J Pathol. 2001 Nov;159(5):1689–1699.
- Walsh NC, Reinwald S, Manning CA, et al. Osteoblast function is compromised at sites of focal bone erosion in inflammatory arthritis. J Bone Miner Res. 2009 Sep;24(9):1572–1585.
- Solomon DH, Kay J, Duryea J, et al. Effects of teriparatide on joint erosions in rheumatoid arthritis: A randomized controlled trial. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2017 Sep;69(9):1741–1750.
- Baum R, Sharma S, Carpenter S, et al. Cutting edge: AIM2 and endosomal TLRs differentially regulate arthritis and autoantibody production in DNase II deficient mice. J Immunol. 2015 Feb 1;194(3):873–877.
