I am a few weeks post-retirement. Having written thank you notes and completed urgent home projects, I swing in a hammock at our currently fire-threatened cabin north of Winthrop, Wash., and reflect. I feel like a young boy while freely flipping pages of a hand-scribed picture book, The Principles of Uncertainty, by Maira Kalman. She…
In multiple trials, baricitinib has proved promising for treating RA. Also, the FDA is requiring drug-interaction studies for sodium polystyrene sulfonate…
The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) announced the availability of its 2015 Guideline for the Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) during the 2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in San Francisco. An early draft of the recommendations was presented at last year’s meeting in Boston, and the final recommendations are now available on the ACR website. The…
Screening gout patients for the HLA-B*58:01 allele may help rheumatologists determine more effective treatments and a patient’s risk of allopurinol-induced severe cutaneous adverse reactions…
(Reuters Health)—Outpatient care may cost more when hospitals own the medical practices or employ the physicians, a U.S. study suggests. Hospital employment of doctors and ownership of physician practices has grown over the past decade as healthcare providers seek to curb expenses with economies of scale and deliver better coordinated treatment to patients. Research reported…
A brief has been filed with the U.S. Supreme Court that, if the court decides to hear the case, could have wide-ranging implications for online medical care and the limits of a physician’s First Amendment right to free speech. Medical Advice Via e-Mail Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Jeff Rowes filed the brief at the…
Receipt of an unsolicited communication that a sweepstakes award has been won may con some people (especially, but not limited to, those underprivileged or undereducated as to legalities), but can’t fool all of the people all of the time. The names of the organizations and products involved are often marketing tool inventions, which imply special…
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…