RheumMadness is an online tournament in which a bracket of teams, representing key learning concepts in rheumatology, compete against each other in a series of head-to-head matchups, much like basketball teams in the NCAA’s March Madness. The 2023 tournament theme was The All Star Season. Each team represented one all star article competing to be…
How does a rheumatologist treat a pregnant woman when many medications are not approved for pregnancy or safety data are limited?
Glucocorticoids remain a prominent part of care for many patients with SLE but can have toxic side effects; this EULAR 2022 session discussed one institution’s approach to lower the dosage.
A recent analysis of retrospective clinical data on patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) at 14 Canadian centers found that a surprisingly high proportion—at least one-third—had active disease at any point over five years of data collection.1 It has been a longstanding belief among clinicians that SLE becomes less active over time, although its accumulation…
Patients under the care of the U.S. Veterans Affairs who were older, non-white and had more comorbidities were less frequently given biologic initiation therapy to treat their rheumatoid arthritis (RA), according to a recent study. Researchers sought to identify predictors of greater use of biologic therapies, as well as factors associated with persistent use of…
As rheumatologists, we have a love-hate relationship with the corticosteroid prednisone, a feeling many of our patients share. It’s our most effective medication to quickly shut down an overactive immune system. When we have a patient with life- or organ-threatening autoimmune disease—severe lupus affecting the kidneys or vasculitis causing hemorrhage in the lungs, for example—large…
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune-mediated rheumatic disease characterized by multisystem involvement that can cause significant morbidity and mortality. Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) is a rare, fulminant, autoimmune-mediated, demyelinating disease involving the white matter of the central nervous system (CNS), and is considered a manifestation of neuropsychiatric lupus. Few reported cases involve SLE and…
A recent study, conducted by the Vasculitis Clinical Research Consortium and funded by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), examined whether the addition of abatacept, a drug that affects T cell activation, to standard prednisone treatment could reduce the risk of relapse in patients with giant cell arteritis (GCA).1 Although…
In a recent clinical trial, tocilizumab helped sustain glucocorticoid-free remission in patients with giant cell arteritis. Patients also received a prednisone taper, and 50% of tocilizumab-treated patients achieved prednisone-free remission and were less likely to experience disease flare compared with placebo…
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Adding prednisone to methotrexate for early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) results in a lower initiation rate of a biologic, better radiographic outcomes and no steroid-related side effects, researchers in the Netherlands say. Although biological disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (bDMARDs) have led to better control of RA and improved functioning and quality of life, they…