Reproductive Health, Biosimilars & More in Focus at SOTA 2025

Dr. Stone and his colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital have created an effective bedside-to-bench research program that has achieved many important insights into IgG4-RD. “Progress has been relatively swift, but there remain many tantalizingly unanswered questions,” he says. Example: It’s unclear why the disease has a marked predilection for men—an unusual characteristic in an autoimmune disorder. It’s also unclear whether IgG4-RD is a vasculitis, and, if so, whether it should be considered a primary or secondary form.

Dr. Stone will also discuss the newest work from his research group, which recently published promising phase 3 data from a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of IgG4-RD. In the study, inebilizumab, which targets CD19 and results in B cell depletion, reduced the risk of disease flares of IgG4-RD.³

Dr. Tanner

Challenging Cases in Osteoporosis

Rheumatologists regularly encounter patients with osteoporosis, some of whom pose evaluation and treatment challenges. In another presentation, Bobo Tanner, MD, will explore specific osteoporosis case studies to help attendees employ a thorough approach in evaluating and managing patients with possible bone disease.

Dr. Tanner, director of the Vanderbilt Osteoporosis Clinic and an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, plans to demonstrate why lab work is important using patient examples. He’ll review actual dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) bone density images and discuss treatment selection.

“Rheumatologists are keen to learn as much as possible about the evaluation and management of patients with osteoporosis, not only because of the use of [glucocorticoids to treat many rheumatic conditions], but also because rheumatic conditions can increase the risk of fracture,” Dr. Tanner says. Example: Rheumatoid arthritis is embedded in the FRAX (fracture risk assessment tool) calculator as an independent risk factor for fracture.

Dr. Tanner notes that rheumatologists have long been leaders in the field of osteoporosis, dating back to the 1990s when the ACR created a guideline for the evaluation and treatment of glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis.⁴ Guidelines, such as this one and the osteoporosis guideline from the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research can be very helpful to clinicians, especially when they are updated over time.⁵ “But we must remember they are just guidelines,” he says.

In addition to his extensive clinical experience with osteoporosis, Dr. Tanner has worked on clinical trials and guideline development. He is currently involved in research projects that use non-DXA techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging or microindentation, to evaluate bone health and predict fracture risks to hopefully find more precise ways of establishing at-risk patients who may need treatment.