All athletes—amateur and professional—should understand their risks for developing injury-related arthritis. Rheumatologists and other physicians at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York take a rapid approach to treating athletes, often considering intense physical therapy, innovative treatments and surgery much sooner than for the average patient—all to keep joints healthy and enable athletes to play for as long as possible…
(Reuters)—U.S. health insurer Anthem Inc on Wednesday raised the prospect of smaller participation in the individual Obamacare exchanges in 2018, saying it would have a market-by-market strategy that hinges on 2017 profitability. The company said that losses due to sicker-than-expected customers in its individual Obamacare plans were a bit less than foreseen in the third…
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Brain connectivity differences predict placebo responses in patients with chronic knee osteoarthritis, researchers report. Positive medical responses to placebo treatments are common, but the underlying central nervous system mechanisms remain unclear. Dr. Marwan N. Baliki and colleagues from the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago used resting-state functional MRI…
A recent analysis found that about 10% of RA patients taking tofacitinib do not follow recommended guidelines and more than half stop treatment by one year…
Statins have anti-inflammatory/immunomodulatory effects that may be useful in preventing rheumatoid arthritis (RA), but previous observational studies about the risk of RA with statin use yielded conflicting results. In this large population-based study, high-intensity statin treatment was associated with a 23% reduced risk of RA when compared with low-intensity statin treatment. This is the largest study on the association of statins with RA risk to date, and the first to assess the effect of relative statin strength…
Rheumatologists and rheumatology health professionals interested in knowing more about the major legislative and regulatory issues that may have an impact on their practice will want to attend the Legislative and Regulatory Update 2016 session at the upcoming ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting. On Tuesday, Nov. 15, from 7:30–8:30 a.m. in Room 140A, Will Harvey, MD, MSc,…
“Doctors must be politically active or they will surrender the control of healthcare to others,” says Tim Hutchinson, former U.S. Senator from Arkansas (Republican), emphasizing the need for rheumatologists to become involved in advocacy given the particularly challenging environment caused by partisan polarization and gridlock in Washington—which is expected to continue regardless of the upcoming…
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) plans to significantly reduce reimbursement for dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA),—used to measure bone density, diagnose osteoporosis and help prevent fractures—performed as a hospital outpatient service in the 2017 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (HOPPS). If finalized, by 2023 it will cut payment for the DXA testing by 37%….
In 2014, the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) was one of 25 healthcare associations invited to participate in an initiative by the American Medical Association (AMA) to reduce the public health epidemic posed by the abuse of prescription opioids.1 The AMA initiative is based on the belief that physicians are professionally obligated to participate in…
In a recent study, investigators examined the effects of both the short- and long-term use of selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on the development and loss of bone. The study results describe the mechanisms by which SSRIs, specifically fluoxetine, affect osteoclasts short term to increase bone mass, but also how the treatment may cause bone loss at six weeks in mice…