Gout News

The Arthritis Foundation is more than 70 years old, but its newest theme — Live Yes! — is in its infancy. Historically, the organization has zeroed in on key pillars, including access to care, advocacy in government and attention to the often-overlooked juvenile arthritis. Yet, the Foundation also understood the importance of interpersonal connections and support networks to patient well-being: An idea that laid the foundation for an online community that simultaneously educates and empowers patients, while cultivating their input to develop solutions for issues common to the arthritis population.

Serious infections are responsible for 1 in 10 gout hospitalizations, with sepsis being the most common diagnosis among serious-infection hospitalizations for patients with gout, according to data published in Arthritis Care & Research.

Gout is associated with an increased risk for heart failure among adults aged 65.5 years and older, according to data published in Arthritis Research & Therapy.

The very idea of social distancing runs contrary to congregation and celebration, two things that lie at the core of New Orleans culture. It is for this reason, perhaps, that New Orleanians were initially resistant to quarantine measures to contain COVID-19. But as the death toll climbed and Mayor LaToya Cantrell canceled St. Patrick’s Day festivities, the city slowly awakened to the idea that this was serious business.

The homepage of the Alliance for Gout Awareness offers a clear and simple message for visitors to the site: “Reducing stigma and empowering patients.” A cursory scroll through the materials and information available support this message, with most of the links and portals on the website providing patients and providers with tools to help meet these goals.

A newly formed organization, the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance, has launched an international registry to collect data on patients with rheumatic diseases who may or may not have contracted the infection that is causing the global pandemic. The aim is to aid clinicians and researchers in real time as the situation evolves.

The situation with COVID-19, or the currently circulating coronavirus, is developing so rapidly that new information may likely be available by the time you reach the end of this paragraph. But along with factual information, misinformation also abounds on social media, on cable news channels and in print publications. Healio Rheumatology will attempt to set the record straight for health care providers looking to sort out fact from fiction.

Patients with inflammatory rheumatic disease receiving conventional DMARDs and a prime-boost vaccination strategy — a dose of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine and a dose of 23-valent polysaccharide vaccine — saw improved immunogenicity, compared with single pneumococcal conjugate vaccination, according to data published in Arthritis Research & Therapy.

The United Rheumatology Spring National Meeting will offer attendees lectures on cutting edge topics such as genomics and transcriptomics in addition to a range of continuing medical education activities. But the real appeal of United Rheumatology, and of the meeting, will be the guidance that can be provided to independent rheumatologists regarding practice management strategies and interacting with payers.

Colchicine treatment increases the rate of diarrhea and adverse gastrointestinal events, but not liver, sensory, muscle, infectious or hematological events, or death, according to the results of a meta-analysis published in Arthritis Research & Therapy.