The Presentation A pale, quiet woman—her mother—wheeled the girl into my clinic. It was a blistering Florida day, and the girl was shivering. She glanced up at me when I said hello and asked her name. “Hi,” she said, giving me a broad smile. Her smile was the only broad thing about her. Her elbows…
Interest in viewing the nail capillaries dates to the late 17th century. Later research by Maurice Raynaud and others in the late 19th and early 20th century first established a direct link between the nailfold capillaries and certain medical conditions. Although underutilized in the past, with the advent of modern digital equipment and the validation…
Limited data exist on the clinical presentation of Muckle–Wells syndrome (MWS) during pregnancy. The purpose of this case report is to highlight the diagnosis of MWS in a pregnant woman. Many rheumatic diseases affect women of childbearing age, and their management during pregnancy can be challenging. Case A 33-year-old, 18-weeks’ pregnant woman was hospitalized for…
MADRID—Researchers have found that systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is independently linked with bipolar disorder and say the findings point to a need for greater awareness of psychiatric problems in patients with SLE. In work led by investigators at Tel Aviv University in Israel and presented at the 2017 Annual European Congress on Rheumatology (EULAR), researchers…
CHICAGO—Joseph Breen, PhD, program officer at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., opened the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) session at the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS) 2017 meeting by asking presenters to describe the current state of the science to the key immunology stakeholders gathered in the room. The hope was that…
A 22-year-old Indian male presented to the emergency department with hemoptysis. A month prior, he had presented to an urgent care center complaining of cough with occasional episodes of blood-tinged sputum in the morning. He was diagnosed with community-acquired pneumonia based on a chest X-ray without laboratory testing and was prescribed levofloxacin. A few days…
CHICAGO—Leonard H. Calabrese, DO, professor of medicine at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, presented on emerging concepts of viral infections and rheumatic disease at the ACR’s State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April. “We are at a pivotal point in rheumatology in understanding the relationship between viruses and rheumatic disease,” began Dr. Calabrese. “It’s a very exciting time.” Dr. Calabrese…
CHICAGO—A clustering of cases in Lyme, Conn., in 1975 led to the discovery of Lyme disease. Allen C. Steere, MD, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, investigated that outbreak, and he shared his knowledge of Lyme disease with rheumatologists gathered at the ACR’s State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April. He explained that Lyme arthritis…
Doctors have had few options to treat the chronic rheumatoid arthritis-like symptoms associated with chikungunya virus infections beyond over-the-counter pain relievers. A recent study in Science Translational Medicine has spurred new optimism by finding that a combination therapy—the anti-rheumatic drug abatacept paired with a chikungunya-neutralizing monoclonal antibody—abolished acute symptoms in infected mice.1 The strategy must…
“I have pain all over my body” is a challenging response after you’ve asked a new patient what brings them in for their visit. You immediately suspect that this patient has fibromyalgia. The prevalence of fibromyalgia in the U.S. is 5 million people, and it is among the most common conditions in many rheumatology practices….