Furuta et al. evaluated the benefits of reducing glucocorticoid doses during remission induction for patients with ANCA-associated vasculitis. The researchers found a reduced-dose-glucocorticoid-plus-rituximab regimen was noninferior to a regimen of high-dose glucocorticoids plus rituximab in these patients.
About 30% of patients with psoriasis have psoriatic arthritis (PsA), a complex, multi-faceted, chronic, inflammatory musculoskeletal and skin disease for which the treatment has changed considerably over the past few years.1 Biosimilars and other new drugs have become a therapeutic turning point for many patients suffering from rheumatic illnesses, including PsA. The treatment of PsA…
Amid spirited discussions on drug pricing and insurance challenges, participants got hands-on experience advocating for current bills regulating prior authorization and pharmacy benefit managers.
On Oct. 8, ChemoCentryx Inc. announced that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has approved avacopan (TAVNEOS), an orally administered selective complement 5a receptor inhibitor, as an adjunctive treatment of adult patients with severe active anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibody-associated vasculitis (ANCA-associated vasculitis), specifically granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA) and microscopic polyangiitis (MPA) (the two main forms…
Initial 24-week data from a study of patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) show that treatment with guselkumab improved symptoms and resulted in a higher ACR20 response than placebo in patients who could not tolerate, or did not respond to, treatment with a tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi).
Reuters)—Severe COVID-19 may trick the immune system into producing autoantibodies that have the potential to eventually attack healthy tissue and cause inflammatory diseases, researchers warned in a paper published in Nature Communications.1 They found autoantibodies in blood samples from roughly 50% of the 147 COVID-19 patients they studied, but in fewer than 15% of 41…
Increased cardiovascular (CV) risk in patients with rheumatic disease is old news. Over the past decade, a multitude of studies have demonstrated elevated CV risk in a variety of conditions: systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis (PsA), to name a few. The risk in patients with rheumatic disease seems to be linked to…
Bechman et al. set out to describe the frequency and predictors of nonserious infections and compare incidence rates across biologic DMARDs. They found all bDMARDs are associated with a greater risk of nonserious infection, with differences observed between agents. Although unmeasured confounding must be considered, the magnitude of effect is large.
Contraception, disease control, family planning and managing life with an infant—five experts addressed these concerns and more for patients with rheumatic disease during a special online webinar.
Seeing the challenges her rural patients faced in accessing specialty care, Amanda Schnell, MD, was inspired to make advocacy an integral part of her work at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.