For the past 30 years, the Rheumatology Research Foundation has been an invaluable resource for investigators looking to further their careers and expand essential research into rheumatic diseases. Among the Foundation’s many award recipients is Robert Plenge, MD, PhD. In 2008, Dr. Plenge received a grant from the Foundation to pursue finding a genetic basis…
As a practicing rheumatologist, I have experienced the increasing payer and government involvement shaping our evolving healthcare system. New payment models, changes in health insurance coverage, the federal mandate for the adoption of electronic health records and the implementation of ICD-10 are recent changes that have rocked our world. Our patients are also paying the…
Despite a generation of advances in molecular biology, a huge gap exists between the Sjögren’s syndrome (SS) patient’s description of their symptoms and the objective findings. Current issues include: Many SS patients are misclassified as either rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), even within rheumatology clinics. Frequently, the sickest SS patients with extraglandular…
Temporal arteritis was first described by Sir Jonathan Hutchinson in 1890 in an elderly retired gentleman’s servant who developed red, painful streaks on his temples and was found to have bilaterally swollen temporal arteries with feeble pulses.1 Sir Hutchinson disputed the suggestion that the red streaks were caused by the man’s hat and, instead, called…
Should you escalate care to a biologic? Many RA patients find this decision difficult and may need extra support and education to come to an informed decision. A recent study on this issue tested the value of a Web-based interactive decision support tool, which was developed with patient and physician input. After eight weeks, patients using the tool showed a measurable increase in the objective and subjective knowledge needed for making an informed decision compared with standard care…
Although osteoarthritis (OA) was formerly considered a non-inflammatory joint disease, it’s now well-appreciated that inflammatory mediators, such as PGE2 and IL-1β, are produced by osteoarthritic joint tissues and can be used to identify patients with symptomatic knee OA. A peripheral blood leukocyte inflammatory transcriptome identifies a subset of symptomatic knee OA patients at higher risk for radiographic progression and may reflect persistent low-grade joint inflammation…
In June 2014, 10 members of a church group returned to St. Louis from Haiti, where they had contracted chikungunya virus (CHIKV), a mosquito-transmitted alphavirus previously unknown in the Western hemisphere that produces inflammatory arthritis symptoms. Because CHIKV-related arthritis mimics seronegative RA, a group of clinicians, immunologists, virologists and geneticists at the Washington University in…
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has toughened the existing warnings for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) due to their stroke and myocardial infarction (MI) risk increase.1 Due to a continual review of these products, FDA is requiring label updates for all prescription NSAIDs. Over-the-counter (OTC) NSAIDs already list the increased risk of MI and…
“Each project adds new knowledge that brings us a little closer to the cure,” Joan Bathon, MD, of Columbia University Medical Center, says of the Rheumatology Research Foundation’s 8th Annual Investigators’ Meeting in San Diego. Dr. Bathon was one of more than 30 investigators who presented the latest progress on research funded by the Foundation’s…
Gregory Barton, PhD, professor of immunology and pathogenesis, University of California, Berkeley, talked about research on the innate immune system and a key protein involved in the trafficking of a subset of toll-like receptors (TLRs) during FOCIS 2015 in San Diego. To keep the body healthy, the immune system responds constantly to foreign cellular invaders…