VIDEO: Risk stratification key before prescribing JAK inhibitors

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As a clinical rheumatologist, I think anytime you're using an immunosuppressant, you know, we're thinking about the concerns that come along with that, especially in this, if you will, post pandemic world. You know, so what are your risks for infection? And when you're thinking about who to put on a strong medication, you know, what are those risk factors and how do you communicate those to patients?

So I think that just goes hand in hand with most of the strong medications that we use as rheumatologists. But then from another standpoint, there's been a lot of discussion with JAK inhibitors and cardiovascular risk. So there was a new black box warning that came out after some post-hoc studies to look at specifically people who have atherosclerotic heart disease. Are they at increased risk for major adverse cardiovascular events? And, you know, there has been a lot of looking into this. And I think that we try to be conservative and really risk stratify patients who have a history of significant cardiovascular disease and at least just have a discussion that they are potentially at increased risk being on these JAK inhibitors. But I think that, you know, we really don't have a full picture yet because these medications were approved in 2012 for rheumatoid arthritis, so we need much more years of data to really understand it.