Search results for: treat-to-target

Beyond Awareness: August Is Psoriasis Action Month

Richard Quinn | August 15, 2017

This month, the National Psoriasis Foundation is urging patients and rheumatologists to take charge of psoriatic disease by setting ambitious treatment goals to achieve better health outcomes…

EULAR Releases 2016 Recommendations on RA Management

Mary Beth Nierengarten | July 14, 2017

Management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is complex. The ever-expanding availability of new drugs requires that rheumatologists and patients constantly consider treatment strategies and targets aimed at both disease control and symptom relief while remaining cognizant of the increasing high cost of emerging medications. Given such complexity, guidelines to inform rheumatologists about the most recent developments…

Predictive Value of Whole-Body MRI & Ultrasound Explored in EULAR Studies

Thomas R. Collins | July 13, 2017

Highlights from the 2017 EULAR Congress MADRID—Researchers say that whole-body MRI could yield an earlier diagnosis of spondyloarthropathy (SpA) in patients with early inflammatory joint symptoms, according to findings presented in a poster session at the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology (EULAR). The approach could lead to earlier treatment and better outcomes, they say. Investigators…

RA Treatments Show Mixed Results

Thomas R. Collins | July 13, 2017

Highlights from the 2017 EULAR Congress MADRID—The anti-IL6 “nanobody,” vobarilizumab, produced mixed results when used with methotrexate (MTX), compared with MTX and placebo, according to results of a 24-week, double-blind Phase 2b study of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), which were presented in an abstract session at the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology (EULAR). The…

Disease-Activity-Guided TNF Inhibitor Dose Reduction Works Long-Term in RA

Reuters Staff | June 22, 2017

NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—In patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), disease-activity-guided dose reduction of a tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi) is safe and effective in the long-term and leads to a large reduction in TNFi use, according to three-year data from the DRESS study. Implementation of this strategy would “vastly improve the cost-effective use of TNFi,” conclude Dr….

How Gout Patients Can Stay on Target with the Go for Six Campaign

Karen Appold | May 12, 2017

Gout patients need to lower their uric acid levels to 6.0 mg/dL or below and maintain that level. According to N. Lawrence Edwards, MD, MACP, MACR, an education campaign has been raising awareness of this fact and helping gout patients…

Institute for Clinical Economic Review Final Report on RA Treatments

Mary Beth Nierengarten | May 4, 2017

On April 7, 2017, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) published its final report, titled, Targeted Immune Modulators for Rheumatoid Arthritis: Effectiveness & Value.1 The stated objective of the report was to assess the comparative clinical effectiveness of the targeted immune modulators (TIMs) used to treat patients with moderate to severe active rheumatoid…

Comparative Assessment of the Different ACR/EULAR Remission Definitions for RA for Their Use as Clinical Trial End Points

Arthritis & Rheumatology | February 28, 2017

Significant advances have been made in the treatment of RA over the past 20 years, and with the hope of developing even more effective therapeutics, achieving a very low level of disease activity, such as remission, is an important outcome to be examined. The ACR and EULAR have defined remission using Boolean- or index-based criteria. The researchers undertook this study to compare definitions of remission to inform choice of end points for future RA clinical trials and included in their comparison the remission criterion of a score of ≤2.8 on the Clinical Disease Activity Index…

ACR Recommends You Treat the Symptoms for Gout Patients

Bruce N. Cronstein, MD | February 15, 2017

In 1982, my wife (also a rheumatologist) and I attended our first American Rheumatism Association (now the ACR) national meeting. After the meeting we stayed with a friend in a suburb of Boston, where we also had the opportunity to meet our hostess’ in-laws, a retired general practitioner and his wife. When her father-in-law shook…

Disease Trends in Hispanic RA Patients in the U.S.

Arthritis Care & Research | February 7, 2017

As the Hispanic population has grown in the U.S., very little research has examined the potentially unique clinical features of rheumatoid arthritis in these patients. A new small-scale study of Hispanic patients with RA identified trends in functional disability—showing that disease activity, pain and depression were modifiable parameters over time, with consistent, independent and additive contributions to changes in functional disability across the disease trajectory…